LAST year, Malaysia unveiled its “Cloud-First” strategy for accelerating cloud migration among its public and private organisations.
However, despite the popularity of cloud technology, Malaysia’s financial sector is hesitant to adopt this innovative approach. Based on a recent Forrester study, local banks and other financial services institutions (FSIs) are slow in migrating to cloud than their Asia Pacific peers. Additionally, among 24 leading IT economies, Malaysia is ranked 14th in preparedness to adopt cloud computing services, according to the 2018 BSA Global Cloud Computing Scorecard .
Because cloud is a dynamic tool that requires a different approach to security and compliance, migration can prove challenging for some organisations. Nevertheless, FSIs must begin to leverage cloud computing in order to stay relevant, innovative, and competitive; otherwise, they will be unable to respond to disruptions from more nimble rivals around the world.
PROS AND CONS OF CLOUD
When organisations use cloud, they are provided with lower operational costs and improved flexibility. Unlike on-premises infrastructure that is expensive to acquire, maintain, and upgrade, cloud platforms are cost-effective and fully scalable.
Despite this, a significant portion of business leaders in the financial industry are quite timid about embracing cloud technology. Financial services firms handle large amounts of confidential information in the course of their daily operations. Leaking financial data or personally identifiable information (PII) can cost an organisation customers as well as its reputation — something that takes years to earn and only minutes to lose. Because of this, FSIs are hesitant to disrupt the status quo and risk exposing their data, even though cloud-based solutions can actually improve security.
While cloud adoption continues to surge in Malaysia, security concerns are showing no signs of abating. Data from Cybercrime Malaysia, an agency under the Science, Technology, and Innovations Ministry, shows that a total of 2,428 cybercrime incidents were reported between January and April last year. When appropriate security solutions are not deployed, it can be fairly simple for malicious parties to steal data. In particular, with the ever-growing number of IoT (Internet of Things) devices and BYO (bring your own) devices accessing corporate information, malware and hackers have more attack vectors than ever before. Fortunately, for organisations moving to cloud, these issues can be addressed through specialised cloud security solutions.
DIFFERENT APPROACH
TO SECURITY
Security is a critical component of any functioning enterprise. This is particularly true in the financial services sector where there are strict regulatory requirements around data residency, data access, and more. Unfortunately, the traditional strategy of maintaining centralised security at the device and network level no longer works in an environment where critical systems are moving to cloud.
Once data shifts beyond the firewall and employees begin to access it from uncontrolled, unmanaged devices, a new approach to security is required. Firewalls only work on corporate premises, while privacy-conscious users tend to resist having agents installed on their personal devices. To overcome these challenges, many FSIs are adopting cloud access security brokers (CASBs).
CASB is a policy enforcement point that delivers visibility, identity management, data protection, and threat protection in the cloud. Because they offer comprehensive visibility and control over data — wherever it may go — CASBs are indispensable assets for all IT teams. In short, a CASB provides a suite of security capabilities that function across various cloud platforms.
The cloud and its myriad services are incredibly helpful tools for increasing corporate productivity, collaboration, flexibility, and cost savings. However, many organisations have resisted embracing this new style of business due to various security concerns and misconceptions about leveraging the cloud.
Today, Malaysia’s move towards becoming a digital nation is increasing the pressure to migrate to cloud for banks and other financial services firms. Fortunately, there is an abundance of security solutions that are able to protect sensitive data, like PII, as it is stored and processed in the cloud.
Cloud security service providers have the expertise to ensure that banks and other financial organisations migrating to cloud can retain the same levels of data security that they’ve historically enjoyed in their on-premises-only environments.
If financial services firms and cloud security service providers work together, financial services in Malaysia can be more on demand and secure than ever before.
The writer is vice-president of sales (Asia Pacific and Japan) of a cloud access security broker
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