First of all, the cloud offers a lot of opportunities for the financial sector. The ENISA states that using the cloud leads to a better ROI and to a more efficient resource utilization, which implies lower costs. Not only these economies of scale, but also a higher resiliency due to better backup services can be obtained by investing in cloud technologies. Using a standardized solution leads to better patch and software update management. Lastly, the cloud also makes it easier to deploy new services and to take them to the market faster and therefore innovation becomes easier. In short: the cloud will modernize the financial sector and has several significant business benefits.
On the other hand, cloud solutions should not be implemented without taking into account some risks. First of all there is the loss of governance, which has an effect on security. Data breaches, where one cloud customer has access to another customer’s data and other isolation problems should also be addressed. Cyber security is the main enabler for a smooth cloud adoption. Cyber security and the cloud in general, should also be compliant with the laws: data has to be protected according to the rules.
The cloud solution and the security measures used should also be compliant with the laws. The main problem with the existing policies and regulations is that they not fully cover the cyber security challenges related to the cloud, nor do the current regulations and policies cover all these issues. In addition, the specific aspects of the financial sector make it difficult to use all the best practices on the cloud in general.
In order to tackle the cloud challenge, financial institutions, NFSA and cloud service providers need to cooperate on an EU-wide harmonization of the legal requirements for financial cloud solutions. They should also work together to raise awareness of the cyber security.
Financial institutions willing to look into cloud solutions should develop a corporate risk assessment and come up with a strategy for deploying the cloud. They do not need to do this all by themselves, as IT integrators such as RealDolmen can help with looking into cloud technologies and setting up a safe environment. At RealDolmen we can combine knowledge on the cloud, on premise and hybrid solutions to provide our customers with the best solution for their situation.
Written by: Elia Mariën – Customer Executive Financial Services