Secure File Transfer Banks and Financial Firms Can Count On

Hackers love to attack two places: where the juicy data and the money is. Financial services and banking organizations offer both in spades.

That is why, according to Forbes, more than a third (35% to be more precise) of all data breaches are against the Financial Services industry. This data is super valuable, as the massive Experian hack showed, and financial and banking IT systems are incredibly complex and interconnected—just the way hackers like them.

The news gets even worse. “Financial services firms are 300 times as likely as other companies to be targeted by a cyberattack,” argued the Boston Consulting Group. “Dealing with those attacks and their aftermath carries a higher cost for banks and wealth managers than for any other sector.”

Research house Vanson Bourne conducted a survey of 100 business decision-makers in UK-based financial services organizations, and a whopping 70% experienced a security incident in the prior year. Most of these incidents stemmed “from employees failing to follow security protocol or data protection policies.” Other factors “included the introduction of malware and viruses via 3rd party devices, including USBs and BYOD (32%), file and image downloads (25%), and employees sharing data with unintended recipients (24%).”

Let the last statistic sink in for a moment. Nearly a quarter of these companies have a problem with data shared with the wrong person. In other words, files are too often sent in an insecure or undisciplined manner.

Given this massive file exposure and risk, this blog focuses on ways to keep files safe during transfers.

Security and Compliance: You Can’t Have One Without the Other

Financial compliance rules mandate that sensitive data is protected, and there are comprehensive audits available in the case of a breach. Secure file transfer via Managed File Transfer (MFT) helps take care of both. “Increasingly strict data protection regulations mandate that networks, user access, databases and business processes are secured to protect financial data and customers' Personally Identifiable Information (PII),” argued the MOVEit Banking and Finance page. “The MOVEit suite of Secure Managed File Transfer products assures encryption of external data transfers, delivery to the intended recipient and detailed audit logs. MOVEit provides the security features and flexible deployments that enable you to meet SOX, GLB, PCI and GDPR data protection requirements.”

Making File Transfers Secure AND Efficient

Even small banks and financial services companies have huge volumes of files, documents and records that must be transferred. Consider all the forms a simple car loan involves, and think about the confidential financial data and PII each document contains.

If you struggle to handle the files you need to transfer today, how are you supposed to launch new services? Here again, MFT comes to the rescue. “The MOVEit suite of products enables consolidation of disparate file transfer processes under a single management tool with end-to-end visibility, performance reporting and audit trails,” the MOVEit Banking and Finance page explained. “It accelerates the development of new services, on-boarding of new external partners, and reduces on-going resource requirements with easy-to-use workflow automation. Its flexible architecture allows you to configure an exact match to your business continuity needs from high-availability to complete failover.”

Meanwhile, MFT helps meet file transfer SLAs, deliver 24x7 services and reduce operations costs.

All this means you can expand your business with awesome new services supported by secure file transfer. “The profitable growth of your business requires the smooth roll-out of new or improved services and fast on-boarding of new partners and out-sourced vendors. Scalable IT operations are an essential ingredient for success. MOVEit provides the ideal platform to support the accelerated roll-out of new services or improvements to existing services such as loan approval processes and customer online banking,” the MOVEit page concluded.

Learning to Love MFT

Customers who move to Managed File Transfer don’t want to look back. And those that adopt MOVEit are particularly satisfied, which the below graphic demonstrates.

Finance Case Study: Scottish Pacific Business Finance (SPBF)

As one of the largest specialist providers of working capital solutions in Australia and New Zealand, Scottish Pacific Business Finance (SPBF) deals with more than 1700 clients across 8 offices, handles more than $14 billion in invoices and provides more than $1 billion in funding to their clients.

In 2016, SPBF acquired Bibby Financial Services’ (BFS), and had to juggle between different systems of file transfer from the two companies. SPBF had to address this quickly, given the massive volumes of sensitive information passing through its systems daily. With the ever-increasing threats towards the banking and finance industry, SPBF could not afford to have a data breach that might affect their customers negatively, ruining the rapport that they have built up over the years.

SPBF was looking to find a way to consolidate all these different methods of transferring files into one seamless and secure process. The new file transfer solution had to be intuitive, reliable, and secure, ensuring that the information being transferred is also in compliance with financial regulations in the countries they are operating in.

The Solution

BFS had been using the award-winning MOVEit Managed File Transfer across their offices globally. During the consolidation process of the acquisition, SPBF decided to extend the use of MOVEit to all its eight offices. “With the different systems we had in place, the degree of human error due to the manual processes were high. But with MOVEit, we finally had a single tool that could deal with all the disparate systems. This made the processes much simpler for us and ensured that our data were always secure,” said Bruce Hort, the Applications Support Manager at SPBF.

SPBF deals with a lot of sensitive information, including credit scorings, which they have to regularly share with banks. However, file transfers from one system to another come with their own set of risks. “Our systems contain large amounts of sensitive data protected by a firewall in our internal system that requires authentication in order to access it. While the files are well protected within the system, they lacked the same protection while being transferred, increasing their vulnerabilities,” added Hort.

MOVEit has also helped SPBF by reducing the steps involved in file transfer. “The focus of our business is the service to our clients, which means that any improvements that can be made to our business processes are highly welcomed,” Hort highlighted. “MOVEit does just that to speed up our business processes”.

Banking Case Study: Banco Columbia

Banco Columbia is an Argentinean private equity financial institution that offers a wide variety of services such as fixed-term investments, trading of public and private securities, savings accounts, checking accounts, safe deposit boxes, currency exchange, funds transfers and insurance policies, among others. In addition, the institution provides individual consumer credit through several channels. The Banco Columbia operational network includes more than 20 branches in Argentina, intermediate entities, marketers, and an in-house sales force.

File Transfer Security

Like every far-reaching financial institution, Banco Columbia handles large volumes of critical, sensitive information every day. “Previously, the verification of such information, which included several security controls to ensure data availability, confidentiality, and integrity, was done manually or was adapted to the solutions of outside entities,” recounted Maximiliano Ignaciuk, Banco Columbia’s Technology Manager. “In some cases, other exchange channels were used, which made security controls and management quite difficult,” he added.

Faced with the need to automate basic data transfer processes, Banco Columbia’s upper management took a look at the MOVEit solution. “We wanted a scalable tool that could be built into our IT security protocols and that would allow us to bring additional services on-line in the future.”

Rapid Implementation and Full Support

The implementation of MOVEit Managed File Transfer took about two months, working with a team of four IT professionals from Banco Columbia. “We were provided with highly professional technical support, including response to queries, identification of possible problems, and looking ahead to decisions that might have to be made later on in different scenarios.”

Added Value for Banco Columbia

MOVEit allows Banco Columbia to streamline its information exchange process while at the same time strengthening its security controls. This helped the institution to add value to its business through more robust and secure technology. “I would recommend MOVEit because of its scalability, usability, security, and performance,” stated Maximiliano Ignaciuk.