Hot IT trends for Banking & Finance

The outlook for Indian banks over the next 12 to 18 months remains negative due to the decline in profitability and slower economic growth, according to Moody's, - a global ratings agency. However, on the other side, we hear positive development of Yes Bank - India's youngest and fourth largest private bank announcing a partnership with American Express to distribute credit cards for a fee. This comes after another recent announcement by the bank to increase its number of branches 500 in 2013. The positive developments pertaining to banks such as Yes Bank (and many more in India) should be a key focus point for Indian CTOs instead of the downbeat macroeconomic forecasts announced by Moody's. This also forms the purpose of this article which is to inform the Indian banking community about the key trends that it would need to address as we enter 2013.

Addressing Data Loss Prevention (DLP)
Sometime last year, global professional services and accounting firm - Ernst & Young published a 24 page report on IT risks which highlights data loss prevention. The report defined DLP as the practice of detecting and preventing confidential data from being "leaked" out of an organisation's boundaries for unauthorised use. This is given that data may be physically or logically removed from the organisation either intentionally or unintentionally. One of the more relevant parts of the report for Indian CTO's is that in many cases, the current remote access tools in many enterprises are not flexible enough to support the business. This can unknowingly lead to users deploying alternative approaches like emailing documents to their personal email accounts to work remotely from the office. This spells trouble for the Indian banking community, if there is a lack of content-aware DLP tools or secure communication platforms. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has issued detailed guidelines on IT security, cyber fraud and governance for the local banking and financial services sector in 2011, but we still feel that more can be done to through information technology acceleration to curb DLP among Indian banks. A recommended first step for banks is to look at integrating best of breed secure web gateway technology with advanced content-aware network DLP. While the risk of inadvertent data leakage negatively affecting the business have never been greater, traditional DLP deployments can be negatively affecting the business have never been greater. Traditional DLP deployments can be extremely time consuming and expensive. Content-aware network DLP is a faster and more effective solution to solve this problem without the headaches of multiple server and systems.

Enhancing existing banking applications through the cloud
The drive to get Indian banks to appreciate the agility and cost-efficiency offered by cloud computing has cropped up at various points this year, and is expected to remain a talking point going to into the new year. We also understand that many Indian based banks have taken a cautious view on cloud computing due to security and regulatory issues. Indian banks and financial institutions have high expectations from cloud computing. Among its many demands, banks would demand that cloud computing offers a seamless technology product that integrates with the evolving requirements of the business. Banks would also expect an optimised and virtualised infrastructure which enables scale and cost efficiency that can leverage the right hardware components and computing requirements. In addition, the current situation which is causing latency and congestion can be overcome by an Next Generation WAN Optimisation solution that speeds internet, video and cloud-based applications. While, we note that many Indian banks are getting aware of the benefits of cloud computing, it will be a popular topic for 2013. The first step to deploying cloud computing is to secure the internet connection. It is recommended that companies look for a purpose-build web security solution that both increases the internet response time for a faster user experience, but that also secures web access.
Seamless integration with other core banking requirements
Indian banks use ATM's, call centres, mobile applications and the internet to connect with customers. However, new trends of communicating between the banks and its customers are steadily rising too. For instance, technology platforms such as Web 2.0 and social media will play a new communication role with the bank and its customer. There would also be further investments made to enhance the mobile technology platforms. There are technologies available which can integrate the visibility, control and compression capabilities in a single appliance. These technologies can identify all applications on the network and monitor response times and utilisation at the application level. While, there are technologies available, the overriding theme is that there will be a bigger push next year to seamlessly integrate the existing and new bank offerings to enhance customer service. A recommended approach going into 2013 for IT is to look at Unified Web Security architectures that seamlessly integrates component into a single management, reporting and policy framework to enable secure access to core banking requirements tailored toward the user, location and device.
Conclusion
While, we have listed three of the hot trends in the Indian banking and financial services sector, we also note that there will be a bigger push for them to provide faster and safer internet access. Given that the banking sector deals with a huge amount of confidential data, it's important for them to install web filtering systems that prevent leakages. Overall, while recapping this article, we note that a lot of trends going into 2013 were very comprehensive talking points this year and looks to continue as we enter the new year. The trends that have been proposed are an agent of greater good for the banking industry despite some uncertainty or a lack of clarity. We hope to see more of being implemented by the wider Indian banking community in the coming year.