Focus on protection

Data protection and privacy is currently a huge focus for financial companies throughout North America and worldwide, FST spoke to DCR’s Joseph Buonomo to find out more.

FST. Many organizations are still not doing enough to protect data and privacy in the financial industry. Why do you think this is? And what risks do the unaware need to be made aware of?
JB. There are many reasons why financial services are not doing enough to safeguard their sensitive information, whether private or personal. Although the resources to devote to such projects may be limited while other projects may seemingly have higher priorities, the central issue is that upper management often does not understand the magnitude and scope of the risks to their operations. Risks to businesses are now being made clear by their severity and the inevitability of multiple breaches in all types and sizes of financial services organizations. Still further exacerbating the problem is that malicious and well-funded criminal entities attack smaller enterprises due to their limited abilities to implement effective information security. There are many examples of what can happen once sensitive information is lost or stolen. The results are often huge fines, law suits brought by credit card issuers and merchant bankers, loss of market credibility, plus the time that CEOs must spend traveling around the globe explaining to stakeholders and customers what happened and what is being done to prevent new breaches.

FST. It seems that most data leakage is the result of carelessness or poor business processes rather than the result of theft. What technologies are available to help companies protect themselves from themselves?
JB. Surveys produced by Gartner, Deloitte and others found that about 70 percent of data breaches can be traced back to internal sources where information is both leaked accidentally and stolen. Direct Computer Resources (DCR) information sharing solution, DataVantage Global is currently the only single-product enterprise-wide solution that can efficiently and cost-effectively assure the scalability of protected data over business and computer processes within or even external to the enterprise. DataVantage Global enjoys this position because of its enterprise-wide rule-based technology and deployment architecture were engineered from inception to obfuscate information intended to be shared wherever it exists through high-performance ‘open’ distributed multi-processing. DataVantage Global currently supports over 200 data systems and platforms in use today by small and large enterprises worldwide.

FST. What are the key risks for organizations and consumers if effective data privacy methods are not employed?
JB. Organizations risk jeopardizing their good customer relationships through loss of consumer confidence which can lead to equity erosion as financial analysts report their business instabilities, fines and losses to the public. Consumers will be disinclined to do business with organizations that either lost data or experienced breaches. It is a well proven fact that information accidentally or criminally obtained can lead to serious financial consequences to consumers whose identity has been stolen, particularly where credit card and account information is used fraudulently.

FST. How can IT executives make the business case for investing in these technologies?
JB. The strategic decision to invest in information security must begin in the boardroom. Through its internal research program, DCR has developed an approach to measure the ‘value at risk’ within an enterprise and quantify those results, thus allowing organizations to appropriately and confidently invest in business and technology solutions where they are needed most.

Executives must be educated about identifying threats to their enterprise and finding solutions to abate them in terms measured in dollar values while fully understanding the consequences that data breaches can cause. DCR has been conducting workshops and taking on leadership roles in national and international financial services and standards activities in an attempt to arm C level executives with enough information to make the case to invest in reliable and cost-effective solutions.

FST. What would be your main advice to both IT professionals and regular consumers regarding the protection of sensitive data?
JB. For IT professionals, don’t wait until it’s too late to implement an information security solution in your organization that will save you time, money and reputation! Obviously, we would like to have the opportunity to discuss our DataVantage Global solution with you. For consumers, be wary of companies that use information about you, your family and friends and then make sure those companies are doing something about protecting your identity and personal information.

About Joseph Buonomo, President & CEO, DCR
Buonomo has served as Direct Computer Resources’ President and CEO since 2000. Prior to that, he was DCR’s Executive Vice President beginning with the company’s inception in 1996. Buonomo was one of the four original developers of the company’s first flagship product, DataVantage for IMS. Under Buonomo’s leadership, DCR has been transformed into a multi-dimensional organization with several state-of-the-art software products.