The financial services sector may have been slower than other industries to migrate to the cloud, but it’s happening now: 54 percent of financial services leaders predict that half or more of their operations will shift to the cloud by 2027.
Experts say that hybrid and multicloud solutions will reign supreme over the industry, due to their scalability, cost effectiveness and the agility they offer institutions today.
Widespread adoption is positive, but one major challenge looms large: security. By design, financial institutions handle sensitive information with the potential for enormous harm in the event of a security breach.
That’s part of why hybrid solutions are leading the charge, allowing banks to work in both a flexible cloud environment and a private data center that can boost security even further. Another way to achieve success is through cloud security posture management.
LEARN MORE: Find out more about CSPM tools and how they secure cloud environments.
What Is Cloud Security Posture Management?
When an organization uses different cloud service providers, misconfigurations may occur. Cloud security posture management helps detect and manage these misalignments so that the entire cloud stack can work as a holistic unit.
A 2021 survey from the Cloud Security Alliance and VMware reports that 17 percent of organizations had experienced some sort of security incident because of misconfigurations. Lack of understanding of best practices in cloud security was the leading cause of misconfiguration.
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Enter CSPM, a set of tools and tactics rooted in understanding those best practices, granting organizations insight into risk assessment, incident response and integration across cloud environments. By comparing configurations across cloud services, CSPM providers help organizations secure their data against risks such as open IP ports, unauthorized modifications and other misconfigurations.
When Altra Federal Credit Union in New Jersey began migrating to the cloud, stakeholders were determined to start on the right foot, using CSPM tools, including a Microsoft solution. “You can’t transfer responsibility to cloud vendors for data. CSPM tools offer fast, actionable data that you can address quickly to reduce security risk,” Altra CEO Josh Hamit told BizTech in 2022.
CSPM tools offer fast, actionable data that you can address quickly to reduce security risk.”
Josh Hamit
CEO, Altra Federal Credit Union
How Cloud Security Delivers Confidence to Financial Services
The financial sector faces unique security concerns that make CSPM particularly important. The risk of data breaches is ever present, with a potential impact to consumer confidence greater than in other industries. According to research from Nutanix, 50 percent of financial services leaders cite security as a challenge to a multicloud model; 46 percent cite integrating data across clouds as another hurdle to overcome.
Through monitoring, defining policies, performing automated assessments, and generating alerts and response recommendations across the entire infrastructure, CSPM solutions give finance providers the security they’re after. With these tools, banks are better positioned to secure assets and data where cloud providers meet.
DISCOVER: Learn the three steps you can take to maximize your hybrid cloud environment.
Because of its ability to work across platforms, CSPM is also helpful with compliance. For example, a CSPM tool can automate compliance checks and reporting, supporting regulation standards across an entire organization. It can also create a documentation trail, helping financial institutions better navigate cloud audits.
As banks work to transition to a hybrid or multicloud environment, CSPM can be an ally in supporting strategic goals without sacrificing security. Upward of 90 percent of organizations say they would benefit from having a unified way to manage data across clouds— and just in time, the financial services industry is joining the trend.
