As we live at the height of an unprecedented period with new challenges and alterations to social norms, we take comfort in the knowledge that life still happens: businesses still need to run and people still need to work.
Embracing these challenges with not just the mindset of surviving, but rather thriving through them, the recently concluded FSI webinar entitled, BSP: Security & Compliance for the Cloud, was held last April 28, 2021 in partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS). This event featured discussions on the important updates on the security and compliance on the cloud for fintechs and financial services in the Philippines.
The question: how are fintech and financial service industry (FSI) businesses able to use the cloud properly while staying compliant and secure?
With a speaker line-up consisting of three brilliant minds in the field of cloud technology and currently leading their own teams at AWS and AWS consulting partner, Apper.ph, each speaker was able to shed light on the updates on BSP (Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas) circulars; and how their organizations are navigating the security and compliance requirements on AWS. The speakers also gave their insights on the FSI industry’s best practices through applicable case studies. This webinar was also attended by Security, Compliance, Audit, and Risk Teams as well as FinTech companies and startups hailing from different parts of the country.
10 Steps To Improve Your Security
Breaking it down into the basics, Alejandra Artiguez, Solutions Architect and Security Specialist at AWS shared the following best practices every company should keep top of the mind in order to improve cloud security:
- Define requirements and understand expectations in the regulatory, internal and industrial aspect. Visit the AWS Compliance Center for more information.
- Understand your role and responsibility. After all, security and compliance is a shared responsibility. Take a look at the AWS shared responsibility model.
- Perform due diligence by understanding global security and compliance control.
- Advance your knowledge and skills. Keep growing and learning by joining webinars.
- Define your workload. Using Amazon Macie, machine learning and pattern matching will help you discover and protect your policy and sensitive data at scale in AWS.
- Obtain regulatory approval. Assess the compliance of your AWS resources. Having the visibility into who made what change from where in near real-time allows financial institutions to detect mis-configurations and non-compliance. This gives you the opportunity to respond quickly to prevent risks before they even happen.
- Define and implement security controls. Are you well-architected? Take a look at AWS Control Tower.
- Monitoring for continuous compliance through AWS CloudTrail.
- Audit your environment. AWS Audit Manager helps you simplify how you assess risk and compliance with regulations and industry standards.
- Reiterate. Sustain these activities by maintaining a feedback loop system with your team so you can monitor at which step improvement can be made.
Scaling Growth and Security for FSIs
Patrick Zulueta, Co-founder and Director of Growth at Apper.ph, shared his insights on how fintechs and FSIs can still innovate and improve customer experience while maintaining their product’s security. Here are some key takeaways from his segment:
- In understanding how hypergrowth is reached for FSIs, we are able to see how value-adding innovation is able to improve the overall user experience. In turn, this drives upward growth for revenues and brand loyalty.
- Exploring the wonders of cloud technology enables fintechs to scale up their businesses while remaining secure and resilient at the same time.
- Introducing brand new features to improve customer experience should go hand in hand with evolving your business’ security posture. There needs to be a healthy and synergistic balance between innovating and evolving.
- Customer experience and improved security is key in sustaining your business.
What’s next?
As a partner of businesses for innovations on the cloud, Apper can do a consultation session with your team to assess your readiness.
This is the part where we build your innovation roadmap together. This includes new features and suggestions for your business’ security improvements to provide the best consumer experience and drive loyalty for your brand.
As always, the future is in the clouds.
For more updates, stay tuned in our blog and join Apper’s upcoming webinar on June 24 entitled “Building Your Innovation Roadmap”.
Do you have questions? Talk to us.
Isabel Pablo
Contributing Writer
There is a tune in her head that only in writing can she dance to. Bound by clarity and purpose, Isabel is a storyteller by profession. She dare asks, What is your story? How can it be told?
