Cyber Threats to Businesses: Redefining the Cyber Security Landscape in Financial Institutions
“Going Digital is what defines the Organizations amid Uncertainties that COVID -19 pandemic has brought, but what defines them, even more, is the potential with which they combat these cyber threats.”
Came the COVID-19 pandemic, and it made almost all the businesses across various sectors suffer. Be it any industry, the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way businesses work.
Organizations across the industries have adopted digital practices; which has brought challenges in terms of cyber threats resulting in a need to redefine the cyber security landscape for the organizations.
Digitization and Financial Institutions:
The financial institutions also couldn’t escape the consequences and repercussions of the uncertainties that COVID-19 created; which is compelling the way they do business.
COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in digitization, giving rise to a Digital Revolution, penetrating the business practices with all new digitalization.
Financial institutions such as banks and NBFC’s are customer-centric institutions and the way they work.
The talks for going digital in the way the financial institutions work have been there for a long. But recently, due to the sudden COVID-19 pandemic, it has become more critical than ever before.
Other factors such as the rapidly changing behavior and preferences amongst millennials and the rising urban population are also penetrating financial institutions to adapt to digital practices.
According to a recent report from VMware, cybersecurity risks in financial institutions have increased by 238 percent amidst the COVID-19 crisis in the first quarter of the year 2020.
This figure shows the financial institutions’ vulnerability as soon as they adopt digital practices, making them even more susceptible.
However, to overcome such vulnerability, gaining customers’ confidence is one of the crucial steps the banks need to take to transform how financial institutions adopt digital services.
Making the Financial Institutions Going Digital:
Enhancing Customer Satisfaction:
Since financial institutions such as banks and NBFC’s are customer-centric institutions; the customers are habitual of visiting branches and getting the work done for most of the services.
No matter how much investments the financial institutions make into other areas; they are still vulnerable due to customers’ perceptions of digital practices.
Educating the customers, the know-how of the digital services in the banking domain, such as online transaction strategy, is to gain their confidence and enhance customer satisfaction.
Increasing Operational Resilience:
The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the worldwide lockdown that made the operational efficiency of the financial institutions suffer; some instead came to a halt. Banks, however, were forced to continue their operations from the branches owing to their customer-centric model.
The social distancing norms didn’t make the banks adopt the “work from home” model; instead, it forced them to build resilience in the operational capabilities they offer. The focus of investments in financial institutions increased from building and infrastructure to investing in cyber security tools.
Increasing the Turnaround Time:
Customers always have had the waiting time and the delayed services issues with visiting the branches to seek banking services.
Implementing a digital transaction strategy will increase the turnaround time by enhancing the online penetration in banking services. And it will also gain the customer’s satisfaction.
Overcoming Cyber Threats:
The benefits that online transactions and web strategy bring to the operations in the banking system also brings with the kit a plethora of cybersecurity risks; where a large chunk of data suffers a risk to get exposed to cyber threats owing to rising cybercrimes, data hacking, phishing emails, among others.
Awareness Among Cyber Crimes:
COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the digital disruption in the operations of the banks. And hence the banks must continue to work with this model amidst social distancing norms, and regional and local lockdowns, going forward.
However, to overcome the increasing cybercrimes and cyber security threats, the organizations need to build resilience in the Information Technology (IT) architecture to ensure continued access to business applications from anywhere to employees, vendors, and partners.
Therefore, rapid digital transformation along with cybercrime awareness helps in overcoming cyber security threats.
Enhancing Data Management:
Banks and financial institutions have always dealt with a large chunk of data. And therefore, it becomes more important to analyze and manage this data well.
However, the cyber security issues have resulted in the rising number of cyber threats issues of late. To combat such rising scenarios, the Banks’ IT architecture leads to an all-new paradigm shift by integrating its applications with the mobile, Software as a Service (SaaS), among others.
Enabling Remote Access:
In a few instances, digital transactions and payments have enabled remote working models. If not entirely enabling the banks and financial institutions to perform operations via remote places.
Moreover, it has further enabled server-based computing and digital workspaces that have exposed the entire online transaction ecosystem to an entirely new cyber security scenario making the cyber risks more prevalent.
Hence, reviewing the remote connectivity solutions that focus on high-security end-to-end data encryption by deploying an advanced and robust authentication improves the cyber security of the digital transaction services.
Conclusion – Cyber Threats:
Digital is the future, and digital practices such as online transactions and payments will be the new normal.
This digital ecosystem is rising abruptly these days, making financial institutions prioritize and invest in cyber defense services to create a risk resilient environment.
Such an environment will enable the banks to address the current cybersecurity risks; redefine the cyber security landscape in financial institutions. And also prepare themselves for future cyber threats.
