Financial Services and the Cloud
When it comes to hosting applications and sensitive customer data on public clouds, a highly regulated industry such as financial services has every reason to think before it blinks. Data security is predictably the main reason financial services organizations seek to understand more. A recent survey conducted by Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) seems to reflect, fairly accurately, the thought process of financial services companies and what we at Wipfli observe.
While the survey results indicate governance and security of data are leading concerns, they also indicate that the two most common enterprise cloud applications are IT development/testing environment and customer relationship management (CRM).
The top six applications that financial services companies are leveraging the cloud for are:
- Application development/test environment (46%)
- CRM (46%)
- Email (43%)
- Collaboration and content management (41%)
- Storage, archiving, and disaster recovery 41%)
- Data analysis and intelligence (41%)
Obviously, the cloud might not be the answer to every problem.
The top five features that survey respondents wanted from cloud service providers were:
- Better transparency and auditing controls (80%)
- Better data encryption tools (57%)
- Receipt of logs in real time (51%)
- Remote service audits (48%)
- Forensics and e-discovery (47%)
Both of the leading providers of cloud services, Microsoft and Amazon, support thousands of financial services businesses across the globe. Both the providers have very stringent security rules and complies with highest security standards. If you are a financial services company and thinking about navigating the “cloud,” a good place to start may be having a conversation with your trusted technology advisor. For additional information, we invite you to contact your Wipfli Relationship Executive or send an email to WipfliFIPractice@wipfli.com.