Cybersecurity Mesh – How does it impact your business?

As digital transformation is rapidly accelerating, more businesses are adapting to this current trend. Now the hybrid work environment is also catching up, organizations are faced with new challenges as we are steering away from the traditional network infrastructure. While the hybrid work model comes with its own set of comfort, flexibility, and productivity it also brings in certain risks and complexity. A majority of the staff is working remotely, and control over data and its security has become less rigid leaving the vulnerabilities exposed. Now how to keep the security intact and not let the vulnerabilities prone to hackers? Cybersecurity Mesh, which acts as a cyber-defense strategy with a more holistic approach. While regular security practices use a single perimeter to secure an entire IT environment, Cybersecurity Mesh on the other hand secures each device with its perimeter independently. 

The traditional network perimeter has now become a diverse network that manages infrastructure, remote machines, and their uses, cloud technologies along with IoT devices. Organizations that are adapting to this approach with their remote work model gain access to data and more control over policies implementing new technologies. Industries such as banking, manufacturing, or government are still very much following the traditional practice. Businesses of larger sizes have complex IT architecture hence they need a more distributed model. To run the business smoothly in today’s competitive market organizations are inching more towards a data processing edge and relying on multiple cloud implementations.

Now that we have understood what Cybersecurity Mesh is, let’s understand its top benefits…

What is the main purpose of Cybersecurity Mesh also known as a Cyber Security Mesh Architecture CSMA for an organization?

To provide the best of cyber security it takes the approach of helping organizations evolve to the new and latest security systems rather than the outdated ones. The crucial aspects of it include increasing the operability of various security tools while improving their agility and strengthening the overall security systems. Given the market pace and unpredictability, with the help is cybersecurity mesh organizations get a more distributed architectural approach. This also helps in getting a standardized responsive security pattern. Apart from the basic important aspects such as scalability, flexibility, and more reliable, Cybersecurity Mesh also prevents the network from hackers.

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Disaster Recovery as a Service: Can Financial Services Rely on It?

Whether because of cyberattacks, natural disasters, or simple human errors, downtime can drastically impair banking operations, and financial institutions take that threat seriously.

What’s missing from most of the DR strategies? Cloud-based Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service. Until it’s too late, disaster recovery rarely gets the attention it needs in any business. In the past, the global pandemic made many companies realize their disaster recovery policies were inadequate, requiring them to adapt. A recent study found that 96% of banks and insurance organizations had a disaster recovery – DR plan in place. Among these, 86% rely on data replication, 85% make backups, and 68% create functional infrastructure designs for high availability. It may come down to outsourcing management tasks to the cloud to improve DR in the financial sector. Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) gives near-real-time redundancy to critical operations while shifting the responsibility for testing and failover to the cloud provider.

Being a financial institution, you can significantly gain from shifting to cloud-based disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS). You can test more frequently with DRaaS because testing is typically automated and unobtrusive. If you need additional assistance, the provider can package DRaaS contracts with testing services and failover assistance. Beyond increasing the frequency and ease of testing, DRaaS providers offer with the assurance of power, cooling, and physical security features necessary to maintain their data and the fact of being well-prepared to handle 

server failures and other unforeseen events. The cloud DRaaS also reduces the costs of data recovery. By leveraging on-demand pricing, financial institutions can facilitate geographic redundancy and avoid paying for computing charges until the site is activated.

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Significance of Data Fabric Solutions and Addressing the Challenges in Data Management

As data is becoming precious and gaining more importance by the hour, what are the challenges faced to ensure proper integration and security? While businesses are investing heavily in data management solutions in terms of finances, tools, and manpower, they are also exploring other ways to manage the data. With the unpredictable market landscape, businesses need a comprehensive range of solutions that can resolve issues of time, location, storage space, or any software related to data management. Since remote work has become the new normal, data accessibility from anywhere is also another requirement and safer data transport. In order to thrive in the competitive market, Data Fabric provides businesses with an efficient, more secure, future-proof unified environment solution. As security has become the biggest concern for businesses across all sectors, measures for data protection have increased. In terms of data storage, segregation, and further division as per its use at every step security is needed utmost. With data fabric in consideration, security is ensured with ease of access and management.

Advanced technology such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), development, and progress in the cloud spectrum with hybrid cloud, edge computing, and other cloud computing solutions have gained much success over the past decade. The overall cloud sector itself has seen remarkable growth, especially since the pandemic, and has promising figures for the future. With all this, the rise of big data has also picked up, and with end-to-end integration of data pipelines, the cloud environments using AI and automated systems data fabric as an architecture method seem to be a promising solution. For data management teams the hurdles such as unification and administration have always been a concern of priority along with security risks, and data silos, among others. Capitalizing data fabric solutions to the hurdles of data systems, embedding administration, and strengthening the security and privacy measures that provide increased and better accessibility to the data for everyone concerned. In order to help organizations to solve complex data problems irrespective of the data environment, location, or platforms, data fabric provides solutions in real-time worldwide. The importance and necessity of ease of data accessibility have become a priority that needs to be addressed. This accessibility at ease can be achieved with proper unification of the data, with this not only one but multiple users can get access, and also it avoids data duplication and deletion.

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What is WAF, and how important is it to your business?

 Being fully knowledgeable about cybersecurity is challenging, especially given how quickly threats evolve. However, by learning more about cybersecurity tools, you may get a solid understanding of how cyberattacks operate.

What is WAF?

A web application firewall, or web application security solution, is a reliable security solution for monitoring, filtering, and preventing incoming and outgoing data packets from an online application or website. Reverse proxies are often used to deploy WAFs, which can be host-based, network-based, or cloud-based.

In order to filter out suspicious or risky traffic, WAFs can be used as network traffic monitoring appliances, server plugins, web application security solutions, or cloud services. They analyze each packet and evaluate application layer logic in accordance with rules.

Web Application Firewalls Types

Network-based WAF 

Implemented locally to reduce latency and is typically hardware-based. However, this WAF type is the most expensive and requires physical equipment storage and upkeep.

Host-based WAF

It can be completely incorporated into an application’s software. This approach is more adaptable and less expensive than network-based WAFs, but it uses a lot of local server resources, is difficult to set up, and can be expensive to maintain. A host-based web application security solution frequently requires hardening and customization, which can be time-consuming and expensive.

Cloud-based WAF

A cost-effective, readily implemented solution that, in most cases, does not ask for a large initial outlay. Instead, customers pay a monthly or yearly subscription fee for security as a service. Regular updates to a cloud-based web service protection solution can be performed without the user’s involvement and at no additional expense. However, since you depend on a third party to maintain your WAF, it’s crucial to make sure cloud-based WAFs have enough customization choices to adhere to the business requirements of your firm.

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Cybersecurity in BFSI – Top Threats & Importance

 Cybersecurity has been the major area of concern throughout 2022 and now 2023 is all set to witness a new version of cyber-attacks with advanced technologies. Cyber-criminals are ready to exploit the technological trends and hunt away into your security domain.

As we transition to a digital economy, cybersecurity in banks is becoming a serious concern. Leveraging methods and procedures created to safeguard our data are essential for a successful digital revolution. The effectiveness of cybersecurity in banks determines the safety of our Personally Identifiable Information (PII), and by extension, ourselves, whether it is an unintentional breach or a well-planned cyberattack.

Current State of Cybersecurity in Banks

According to the S & P Global study on the share of cyber incidents reported across industries in the past years, financial institutions have topped the list and experienced more than a quarter of such security issues.

To make a comparison, the BFSI sector experienced 26% of these cybersecurity incidents, compared to the Healthcare (11%) Software and Technology Services (7%) and Retail (6%), and Retail (6%).

The volume of cyber threats is increasing fast, which shows how critical cybersecurity is to banks today. Particularly for small financial institutions and credit unions that lack the resources to survive, cyber-attacks can be very expensive to endure. Additionally, such financial institutions may suffer catastrophic reputational damage.

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How Managed Security Services Keep Your Business Data Protected

Everything that is managed works great, right? So, why not successfully get your organizational security managed?

As security has been the priority for organizations from SMBs, banks, and government sectors to Fortune 500, managed security services have leaped.

It has become difficult for most organizations to look after the evolving cyber-attacks and put so much time and effort into mitigating the issues. In addition, for SMBs, it can be challenging to implement security measures due to various limitations related to budget, expertise, and security personnel.

Managed security services are a great way to protect your organization’s data and systems from hackers. If you want to increase your company’s cybersecurity, the best way to do so is by hiring a managed security service provider who can provide all of the necessary tools for preventing attacks on your network.

The managed security services market is projected to reach US$ 53.22 Bn by 2031

What Does Managed Security Service Mean?

Managed Security Service is a security solution that provides 24/7 monitoring of your organization’s networks and systems. In other words, it is a way to secure your business against threats like fraud, cyberattacks, and data breaches. A managed security service provider like ESDS offers security assistance or manages your entire security operation center per your requirement. Your SIEM tools, IDS/IPS, firewalls, antivirus software, vulnerability, compliance management, and other security technologies are all under an MSSP.

Managed Security Services offer you great flexibility because they can take different forms depending on your needs. For example, the managed security services may be used as part of a more comprehensive security solution, or they could just be used to secure your assets.

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Cybersecurity Mesh – How does it impact your business?

As digital transformation is rapidly accelerating, more businesses are adapting to this current trend. Now the hybrid work environment is also catching up, organizations are faced with new challenges as we are steering away from the traditional network infrastructure. While the hybrid work model comes with its own set of comfort, flexibility, and productivity it also brings in certain risks and complexity. A majority of the staff is working remotely, and control over data and its security has become less rigid leaving the vulnerabilities exposed. Now how to keep the security intact and not let the vulnerabilities prone to hackers? Cybersecurity Mesh, which acts as a cyber-defense strategy with a more holistic approach. While regular security practices use a single perimeter to secure an entire IT environment, Cybersecurity Mesh on the other hand secures each device with its perimeter independently. 

The traditional network perimeter has now become a diverse network that manages infrastructure, remote machines, and their uses, cloud technologies along with IoT devices. Organizations that are adapting to this approach with their remote work model gain access to data and more control over policies implementing new technologies. Industries such as banking, manufacturing, or government are still very much following the traditional practice. Businesses of larger sizes have complex IT architecture hence they need a more distributed model. To run the business smoothly in today’s competitive market organizations are inching more towards a data processing edge and relying on multiple cloud implementations.

Read More>>

Database Management Systems – Managing your data landscape

Every modern software application depends on data, and databases are the most popular method of storing and managing applications’ data.

Databases have developed from conventional relational databases to more sophisticated databases, including No SQL, columnar, key-value, hierarchical, and distributed databases, due to the proliferation of web and cloud technologies. Structured, semi-structured, and even unstructured data can all be handled by each kind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Furthermore, databases continually handle delicate and crucial data. The need for compliance and the dispersed nature of most data sets have made managing databases difficult. To maintain large databases, organizations need tools that are reliable, secure, and easy to use. Database management systems fill this need by providing a framework for managing databases. Let’s look at it.

What is a database management system?

Using a DBMS, the following common database administration tasks can be carried out

Users may easily manage databases thanks to a piece of software called a database management system (DBMS). Through this, users can access and interact with the database’s data. These operations might be as simple as data queries or as complex as creating database schemas that significantly alter the structure of the database. Additionally, DBMS provides secure, concurrent user interaction with a database without compromising data integrity or interfering with other users.

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3 Reasons Why Community Cloud Is The Cloud Of The Future

In its initial days and forms, cloud services were industry neutral with horizontal offerings. It was for everyone, similar to any other public service like electricity or water, hence classified as Public Cloud. But, the scenario is rapidly changing, and what we see now is the future of the cloud with an industry-specific list of required services and offerings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the time being, the further progress of the cloud will depend on the ability of cloud technologies to adapt to and apply customized business requirements. This is now considered the next step to enhancing the cloud adoption process. It differs from a public, private, or hybrid cloud and is termed a community or vertical cloud.

What is Community Cloud?

A community cloud is a single, sector-specific solution that combines the advantages and capabilities of various cloud types (Banks, insurance, government, enterprise, etc.). It is also best suited for organizations working on related applications, research topics, or projects that require the same resources. A community cloud is an example of a private cloud that provides specialized infrastructure for businesses from a particular community with shared concerns about security, compliance, jurisdiction, etc. When it comes to cost-effectiveness, privacy, and security, it is the perfect answer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Rising Demand for Community Cloud

Recently, we’ve seen many major Cloud Service Providers offering Community Cloud Services, whether Government Community Cloud, Banking Community Cloud, or Enterprise Community Cloud, each offering particular services for the prescribed business vertical. The key differentiators are each cloud vertical’s technical, security, and compliance tools. However, the true potential of these communities is yet to be achieved with the requirement of vertical cloud or community cloud services for emerging business verticals like IoT, Healthcare, e-Commerce, Insurance, Autonomous Vehicles, etc., as each one of these business verticals is going to have requirement of specialized tools with specific compliance configurations, security, and performance-based upon a uniform data model.

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Digital Transformation in The Cooperative Sector

In India, the cooperative sector plays a crucial role in the banking ecosystem. There are 1,531 urban cooperative banks and 97,006 rural cooperative banks as of May 31, 2021. Moreover, the overall depositor base of these banks exceeds eight crores. With such a significant contribution, the complete digital transformation of these banks is essential to make them future-ready. Especially after the advent of the pandemic, the digital transformation of cooperative banks has become a must. Although technological advancements have already begun in the cooperative sector, it still has much to catch up with high-tech commercial banks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cooperatives must digitize if they want to navigate the shifting environment. They could be able to provide financial services through conventional means and physical locations. However, this may not be useful in retaining important clientele that prefers simple and digital operations in the future. 

At present, cooperatives rely on close relationships with their clients and members. Although trust and relationships with stakeholders are important, they may not be enough to attract the current generation to financial services.

Moving to Cloud & a Reliable DR plan: The foundation stone for total Digitization

Cloud computing is an essential tool for the cooperative sector in order to stay competitive in the face of growing private banks today. With the Cloud, banks can improve agility, drive innovation with cutting-edge technology, utilize industry-specific solutions, and shift their spending paradigm from CapEx to OpEx.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ESDS has dedicated BFSI community cloud services that are a highly adaptable platform that supports Hosted Payment and Security Services, Core Banking Solutions (CBS), and cutting-edge technology. ESDS BFSI Community Cloud is built in strict compliance with regulatory requirements, security guidelines, and resilience guidelines mandated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). To date, 450 + Cooperative Banks, UCB, DCCB, and Apex banks are working with us as partners to transform their banks into digital transformation. 

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