Enterprise companies are spending more on the cloud in 2018. Financial services, which harvest the credit card info and sensitive data of customers, should also join the cloud. Here’s why.
Organizations are spending more on the cloud in 2018.
As of 2018, according to RightScale, 26 percent of enterprise companies are spending more than $6 million per year on public cloud services, while 52 percent are spending more than $1.2 million annually.
Why are enterprise organizations spending so much? Because cloud computing is the best investment for companies in charge of collecting and processing large amounts of data.
Financial services, especially, can benefit from cloud computing. Their specialized needs, including the collection and protection of customer data, credit card information, and other sensitive information, can greatly benefit from the protection that the cloud can provide.
But data protection is only part of it. Here are the top four reasons financial services should join the cloud:
- The cloud decreases costs of on-site IT equipment.
Financial services such as banks, accountancy companies, stock brokerages, and investment funds require a good deal of hardware and software to keep running. Depending on the size of the organization, the infrastructure can grow until it’s too expensive to maintain. With the cloud, there’s no need to invest in extra hard drives or services—your chosen provider takes care of all that for you, so you no longer have to pay to maintain old hardware or to update outdated software.
The only problem that could arise regarding cost is cloud cost management or wasting cloud space. According to RightScale’s 2018 State of the Cloud survey, only a minority of companies have implemented policies to optimize cloud costs, such as shutting down unused workloads or selecting lower-cost clouds or regions. The solution: Reel in cloud use and keep costs low.
- The cloud improves operational agility, efficiency, and flexibility.
With the cloud, employees can work anywhere so long as they have an Internet connection or a phone plan. Apps and services can be updated automatically without overhead from an internal IT department, which allows for more agile and efficient operability.
Many cloud-based services such as Salesforce or Slack provide easy ways to collaborate with team members from across the globe. Something as simple as Microsoft Office 365’s cloud offers teams the option to finish work and pick up where they left off at different locations. Employees in financial services can share passwords and assign roles as necessary, and rest assured that their operations are kept safe as long as everyone follows standard safety procedures such as strong passwords and multi-factor authentication.
- The cloud easily allows you to bypass compliance regulations.
To do business, financial companies must abide by several compliance laws, including the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and the General Data Protection Regulation, which requires companies to safeguard the personal and sensitive information of customers and employees at the risk of heavy fines.
According to a RapidScale study, 91 percent of businesses said the cloud makes it easier to meet government compliance, thanks to cloud providers that encrypt data, retain email for use in trials as evidence, and multi-layer virus and intrusion protection. Some laws, including the GDPR, also require companies to know where their data is stored at all times, something that the cloud can provide with ease.
- The cloud gives your organization a big boost of security.
It’s common belief the cloud is not as safe as on-premises security; that a bunch of faraway servers you can remotely access so easily are open to attack by hackers. While that’s true to a point, the purpose of the cloud provider is to monitor all incoming and outgoing traffic for all the documents, files, and sensitive information it’s storing and to prevent unauthorized access. The truth is, the cloud is much safer than on-premises servers, which can be compromised from within by unscrupulous insiders.
In fact, according to RapidScale, 94 percent of businesses saw an improvement in security after moving their information off-site to the cloud. A big reason for the increased sense of security is the benefit of data encryption. Since encryption scrambles normal text into unreadable ciphertext, hackers can’t make any use of the information they steal—even if they get past firewalls, two-factor authentication, and various other security protocols, the cloud can provide financial services.
There are several vendors that offer additional security for all kinds of cloud services. One of these is eperi which starts even earlier: eperi encrypts sensitive data even before it leaves the company and is sent to the cloud. Thus, only encrypted, i.e. unreadable data is stored in the cloud. The eperi Gateway acts as an additional layer of security and control that you can overlay over your existing provider, whether that’s Office 365, Salesforce, or other applications. With the eperi Gateway, you can bypass compliance, improve operability and collaborative efforts, and not worry about the safeguarding of your data. To find out more, contact us.
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