Traditional MSSP Models Aren’t Getting it Done: What Financial Services Need from a Security Partner
A shift in the customer experience and industry challenges has made brick-and-mortar obsolete. The challenges facing Financial Services companies, from regulatory compliance to hybrid work environments, have presented a high-risk, difficult management paradigm, and a competitive advantage strain.
While larger companies have done a mostly adequate job of leading the forefront, smaller and mid-size banks and financial institutions are struggling to keep up. The bottom line is that technology has not yet out-paced guidelines that companies are required to follow, business risks that have come into play in a pandemic-driven world, and the need to provide a wide range of convenient, personalized, and secure service offerings for customers.
Traditional MSSP (Managed Security Services Provider) models are not cutting it in this new era. With today’s risk factors, both internal and external, there is massive potential for critical data exposure. These factors include workers in hybrid or remote locations, unmanaged networks such as home or inadequately secured WiFi, unprotected devices such as computers, laptops, and tablets, and unsupervised working conditions. Printing, as it has in the past, can further compromise data security, since at-home workers are more often than not completely independent. Overall, confidentiality has never stood at a greater risk of being breached. We believe the new hybrid and distributed workforce model paradigm is not going back to traditional models – therefore, we must modify our management approach.
Today’s threat landscape is complex, and there are some staggering numbers tied to data security breaches. According to IBM’s “Cost of Data Breach Report” for 2021, the average spend to mitigate a cyberattack in a hybrid cloud environment is $3.61m. An average Ransomware breach costs companies $4.62m. Unknown security flaws with operating systems and apps, especially early iterations, present challenges for financial companies, along with more traditional phishing methods, keylogging, and social engineering attacks.
Regulatory compliance failures are another challenge, especially for small to mid-size businesses. On average, violations cost companies $2.3m in fines in 2021, according to the IBM report.
When all of this is factored in with the need to provide creative services and solutions within a fully connected experience for customers, the previously-noted management paradigm comes to the forefront. How can a company stay at the cutting edge of online banking, investing, and wealth management while facing increasing risk? How can apps and other features – so critical to the competitive / personalized experience expected by today’s consumer – be safe and secure, and as close to unbreachable as possible? How can your customers get real-time information and full portfolio visibility while also benefitting from the security and privacy that your platforms offer?
Most small to mid-size companies simply do not have the knowledge or the resources to address these challenges without assistance. Traditional MSSP models are hyper-focused on security, but providers tend to lack the knowledge and expertise that are needed in the financial industry. In-house Skillsets are not broad enough to fully understand both the security environment and particular business needs. There is a lack of remediation services, or even remediation support, and under old models, and there is little to no attention paid to the urgency of getting products and services out to market.
Neovera has approached the current issues stated above with a more holistic approach. The model should be one of combining the traditional MSP services with MSSP. Since the complexity of current vulnerabilities in such a hybrid distributed models are so great, we really need to look at all levels of the OSI stack (traditionally speaking) from the physical layer to the application and user layer. Also, one of the most overlooked areas is IAM (Identity and Access Management). Too many identities, in multiple autorotative repositories, across multiple platform (i.e., on-prem, co-lo, and cloud). Neovera engineers have extensive experience in all of these platforms and disciplines.
Next generation MSSP solutions are necessary to keep pace with the needs of today’s financial security. Join our webinar on June 21st to see how to take your IT infrastructure management to the next level, and to learn what companies need to be doing to mitigate risk, avoid penalty of non-compliance, and to ensure clients’ and customers’ data and assets are secure.