Large-scale banks not only manage billions of dollars in investment, income, and savings but also equally vast volumes of sensitive data, including information gathered by their physical security systems.
It’s not surprising then that the banking industry is one the most common targets for cyber-attacks and are 300 times more likely than any other industry to be targeted by cyber attackers. Over 3400 successful bank assaults occurred in 2020 alone. According to IBM and the Ponemon Institute, the average cost of a financial data breach in 2021 reached a staggering US$5.72 million.
While the immediate financial loss of these attacks is apparent, it is critical to understand the extent of the implications involved. A successful assault can severely impact a bank’s reputation, jeopardizing client trust, shareholder value, and possible future revenues. Moreover, these threats are heightened because banks still use disparate legacy tools and processes that were designed to meet the specific needs of distinct departments.
To keep up with the ever-evolving threats and risks, banks must upgrade their legacy security solutions and adopt a hybrid-cloud infrastructure. According to Genetec’s State of Physical Security 2021 Report, only 14% of respondents in the Middle East indicated that at least 25% of their physical security environment is cloud or hybrid cloud. It is safe to assume that the number does not largely differ for the banking sector. Implementing a hybrid-cloud infrastructure can help large-scale banks significantly increase security, reduce costs, and improve intelligence.
Lowering IT expenses
As large-scale banks are adopting digital banking while also facing increased cybersecurity assaults, security teams are being asked to work smarter with smaller budgets. As banks seek to upgrade their systems, cost-cutting has become a primary focus. With banks regularly spending around 75% of their IT budgets on legacy architecture parallel systems, embracing new technologies that enhance operations and boost efficiency can lower IT expenses, but only if networks are not put at increased risk.
Dismantling silos
Large-scale banks recognize the difficulties they encounter with siloed legacy systems and are aware that it is time to upgrade. Many organizations are resorting to single-purpose technologies to handle specific short-term challenges to meet the demands of an increasingly complex threat landscape and improve operational efficiency. Unfortunately, this often results in a collection of systems that were never intended to function together in the first place.
A bank’s security system should help break down silos rather than replicate them. Integrating new tools does not eliminate a siloed approach to working because security teams must still navigate multiple systems that were not designed with this functionality in mind.
Banks must use a unified platform to maintain a consistent standard of cybersecurity across all branches, improve operations by centrally controlling physical security, and increase productivity by lowering the update and maintenance costs associated with integrated technologies. Furthermore, by deploying on the cloud with solutions that have built-in analytics, banks will better safeguard their data from hardware problems and theft, while also gaining actionable insights to help keep their branches functioning efficiently.
Improving intelligence by utilizing a hybrid-cloud infrastructure
Data-driven intelligence is critical for large-scale banks to strengthen investigations and the customer experience. Working with a hybrid-cloud architecture and cloud-based solutions that have built-in analytics makes it easier to access and correlate data from many systems.
As a single platform can automatically link video and other data streams, including access control, it shortens the time required to identify and correlate information while eliminating human error. In conjunction with a cloud-based evidence management system, a unified platform may assist security professionals and law enforcement during a post-event investigation by offering a single, central touchpoint for investigations involving many sites.
In conclusion, large-scale banks face a variety of challenges including an ever-evolving threat landscape, stretched IT resources, and ever-shrinking budgets. To address this, a growing number of financial institutions are looking at migrating their video surveillance to a hybrid cloud infrastructure.
Large banks really need to consider their security systems as more than just a collection of tools. Instead, they need to identify them to improve operations and gain better insights. To successfully achieve a secure network environment, careful planning is required and the implementation of a hybrid strategy that includes unifying system consolidation and cloud migration is the way to go for any big bank.
