Data Protection in the Financial Industry: Why Is It So Critical for the Financial Monoliths?

Following recent high-profile data breaches around the world, the data privacy debate has grown in importance and taken centre stage in the regulatory world, particularly in the financial services industry given the vast amounts of personal data processed by financial services organisations and their third-party IT solution providers.

Just like in other industries, hybrid and multi-cloud deployments are becoming the norm for financial organisations, as they allow for the greatest degree of flexibility, scalability and privacy to suit different requirements.

However, adopting hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructure simply means a larger surface area of vulnerabilities, particularly for FSI. And Veeam, a global leader in backup, recovery, and data management solutions, is on hand to provide modern data protection to FSI organisations in this region.
 
The Reality

Many financial organisations are unable to recognise all components of the data security risk they face for three major reasons. First, some fail to recognise the significance of this risk; second, some lack the competence to identify critical risk factors and design mitigation strategies; and third, many fail to allocate or organise enough resources to manage this risk.

Although large and medium-sized businesses commit appropriate resources to data security risk management, there is a lack of coordination among relevant business sectors such as information technology, information security, human resources, financial crime, and physical security. There is an overemphasis on IT controls and not enough on office operations, monitoring, and due diligence.

The accelerated digitalisation of production has pushed many organisations to admit that their security has not kept pace, despite their reliance on data and displeasure with the status quo being at an all-time high.

Improving data protection is being propelled largely by the realisation that cyber attacks, primarily ransomware, are a “when” rather than an “if” for most organisations, with reliable recovery being a part of one’s cyber-preparedness plan. As a result, it is widely accepted that “ransomware is a crisis,” and that orchestrated recovery from backups is an integral part of any cyber- and BC/DR plan.
 
Definition of Data Protection for FSI

Apart from financial services, there isn’t much of a difference between high priority and normal data. This is because the workloads generated by the operations of these two types of data are often not that distinct. However, 64 per cent of “high-priority” data and 58 per cent of “normal” data have a data downtime tolerance of little more than one hour for FSI organisations worldwide. These expectations are comparable to or greater than the global expectation of 56% for “high-priority” data and 49% for “normal” priority data.

Due to their low tolerance for data downtime, FSI organisations must implement a top-to-bottom plan to protect their data and services. Backup alone may not be adequate to attain the required recovery times. To achieve reasonable efficiency and reliability, backups must be paired with modern capabilities such as snapshots and/or replicas.
 
The Veeam’s Perspective

To remain secure, FSI organisations must enhance their data protection game, just as other industries are doing. According to the Veeam Global Report, FSI organisations are one of the few sectors that are still slow to incorporate modern data protection, and its complex applications are still running on legacy systems, possibly for a few more years. Consequently, Veeam proposes a comprehensive data protection solution that incorporates physical, virtual, and cloud-hosted workloads.

Veeam provides a single unified platform for data protection in the Cloud, Virtual, Physical, SaaS, and Kubernetes environments. Veeam ensures that FSI organisations receive modern data protection that includes the following features:

• Simple – A platform that is simple to use and built to last, with universal licencing.
• Flexible – Integration with any cloud, storage, or platform is seamless.
• Reliable – Your data is always available, as is your backup, and you have access to it 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
• Powerful – Any FSI organisation can benefit from a data security solution that is quick, safe, and scalable.

Protect Your Data

Financial services in this region are in need of a digital transformation more than ever. Whether your data is on-premises, at the edge, or in the cloud, Veeam delivers a unified platform to ensure your data is secure and always available.

Protecting oneself from cybercrime and driving business resilience is the ultimate goal for FSI organisations, as data affiliated with FSIs are usually highly sought after and lucrative. Find out how you can reduce costs and complexity while achieving your business goals with Veeam: the #1 Backup & Recovery solution.