This insideAI News technology guide co-sponsored by Dell Technologies and AMD, insideAI News Guide to Big Data for Finance, provides direction for enterprise thought leaders on ways of leveraging big data technologies in support of analytics proficiencies designed to work more independently and effectively across a few distinct areas in today’s financial service institutions (FSI) climate.
Security Considerations
An important application area where big data is taking a firm foothold with many FSIs is information security. In conjunction with the traditional 3 Vs of big data, financial industry firms must consider a fourth V: vulnerability. To manage big data effectively, you must keep it secure and compliant with regulatory requirements at all times (vulnerability).
Protecting a vast and growing volume of critical information—and being able to search and analyze it to detect potential threats—is more essential than ever. As the software platforms (e.g. Hadoop) supporting this quantity of data are more widely used, managing their security and availability becomes a big data challenge in and of itself, requiring continuous diagnostics and monitoring.
Banking and financial institutions need to secure the storage, transit and use of corporate and personal data across business applications, including online banking and electronic communications of sensitive information and documents.
The typical IT environment consists of a mix of new and legacy systems and applications across highly distributed networks of branch offices, call centers and web portals. Many of the traditional point security solutions that are deployed add complexity and management costs, and leave gaps between systems and applications that are highly vulnerable to attack.
The increasingly global nature of the financial services industry makes it necessary to comprehensively address international data security and privacy regulations. Financial institutions are top targets of cybercrime. While all types of businesses are vulnerable to attacks by criminals, it’s the security breaches at financial firms that elicit the most media attention, public scrutiny and legislator consternation. When threats occur, it’s more than financial loss at stake.
In today’s business world, cybercriminals are lurking everywhere—looking for new ways to gain unauthorized access to sensitive data. Some savvy criminals even use AI in their exploits, so your company has to use AI to fight AI, or risk leaving your critical assets exposed. Security has to be prioritized at every layer of your IT infrastructure, especially as AI, the Internet of Things (IoT), and other evolving technologies introduce new vulnerabilities.
Data privacy, digital ethics, and security best practices are vital for maintaining trust and ensuring business success. To protect against emerging threats, your infrastructure should be AI-ready with end-to-end security. At the platform level, your systems should include built-in security with:
- A secure hardware root-of-trust. If the server BIOS is corrupted or compromised, the processor should prevent the firmware from booting.
- Hardware-accelerated memory encryption. The processor should protect data-in-use with full-stack encryption, using secure key generation and key management.
- Virtual machine (VM)-level encryption. The processor should also protect against hypervisor corruption with hardware protection, which is a more robust solution than software protection.
- Server-level security technology. Beyond secure processors, the server platform should offer digitally signed firmware updates, automatic BIOS recovery, firmware rollbacks, and systems lockdowns to prevent configuration “drift.”
- Trusted vendors also build security into their manufacturing processes and ensure a secure supply chain. This includes verifying the authenticity of components or parts, using trusted suppliers, and physically securing the build environment, the system build process, and the final shipments to customers.
Above the hardware platform requires intelligence against cyber threats as well. Dell EMC PowerProtect Cyber Recovery provides maximum control of data and infrastructure with a secure on-premises vault protected with an operation air gap and multiple layers of physical and logical security.
Dell EMC PowerProtect Cyber Recovery provides proven, modern and intelligent protection to isolate critical data, identify suspicious activity and accelerate data recovery allowing you to quickly resume normal business operations.
- On-premises in an air-gapped secure Cyber Recovery vault
- Compliance-level hardware-based immutability and NTP tamper protection
- CyberSense identifies threats and helps enable assured recovery
Protecting your vital data from cyber-attacks requires proven and modern solutions. With Dell EMC PowerEdge Servers, using the latest AMD EPYC Processors, as well as Dell EMC PowerProtect Cyber Recovery, customers can feel confident in identifying and restoring known good data to resume normal business operations after a cyber-attack.
Conclusion
The financial services industry was quick to adopt data analytics and AI, even in its early stages. One big and exciting frontier for AI and analytics in this industry is the ability to combine both structured and unstructured data to continuously gain new insights, accelerating data to value. Whether it’s retail banking continuing to drive more digital first initiatives, companies keeping compliant with increasing data growth, while keeping it secure and cost-efficient, or bringing in more automation, AI and ML into trading strategies and processes, FSIs that can create the most complex real time data models to incorporate the most data, will gain huge differentiation in their businesses.
A race is already developing where FSIs are competing to incorporate the richest collection data into their AI models to gain the deepest insights. These budding super users will be the new AI enabled tech stars of finance, much as Google®, Amazon®, Facebook®, Baidu® and others have been in their own industries.
Analytics and the ability to efficiently and effectively exploit the big data technology stack, advanced statistical modeling, and predictive analytics in support of real-time decision making across business channels and operations will distinguish those companies that flourish in uncertain markets from those that misstep. To avoid missteps, it also helps to have the right technology partners to help get you there.
Next Steps with Dell Technologies and AMD
With the power of data analytics and AI, your company can drive innovations and improve operations. And with trusted technology partners like Dell Technologies and AMD on your side, your AI and analytics-driven journey can be worry-free. With an unrivaled portfolio of modern infrastructure and AI-optimized solutions, Dell Technologies can help you capitalize on the latest technologies—saving you time and money, while reducing risk.
Dell EMC Ready Solutions, powered by the latest AMD, AMD EPYC™ and AMD Instinct Mi100 processors, are engineered with the right balance of performance and low TCO for AI, Analytic and HPC workloads. Built for processing massive amounts of data, the platform features the highest- performance architecture, generous memory and storage options, and industry-leading security.
What’s more, Dell Technologies’ worldwide HPC and AI Centers of Excellence make it easier to collaborate with some of the brightest minds in AI, HPC, and data analytics. The expert network of resources can help you fine-tune your solutions, test new technologies, and share best practices for optimized results.
Take the next step, today
Data is everywhere, and it holds the key to better understanding user transactions, customer behavior, machine behavior, security threats, fraudulent activity and more.
Visit our Data Analytics Solutions website or contact your Dell Technologies or authorized partner for more details on how to better leverage your data today.
In the past few weeks we explored these topics:
- Introduction, Retail Banking
- Regulatory and Compliance, Algorithmic Trading
- Security Considerations, Conclusion, Next Steps with Dell Technologies and AMD
Download the complete insideAI News Guide to Big Data for Finance courtesy of Dell Technologies and AMD.
