Navigate 3 trends in Financial Services with DevSecOps

June 29, 2022

There are both opportunities and problems for the financial services industry regarding technology. Modernizing financial business infrastructures isn’t new, but our most prominent banks, investment firms, and insurance companies see it as a constant priority and challenge. Financial services cloud adoption trends have taken center stage recently, from infrastructure to data to the apps that connect these resources. Although we are aware of the growing momentum of workloads shifting to the cloud, this blog article will not delve into these widely discussed and approved financial sector initiatives. When it comes to financial services, there is an unusual intersection of dynamics that directly impacts security.

3 DevSecOps-aligned trends in the Financial services industry

The financial industry was already moving toward a digital experience for clients. Startups in the financial sector offer more flexible services and better returns at lower operational costs. Users submit feature requests in record numbers, fueling the online service industry’s ongoing innovation.

There is a lot of innovation and agility in the FinTech companies and the more established financial institutions. An increase in open source in their code base means an increase in risk and a need for additional security measures to ensure safe financial service experiences.

A global pandemic accelerates the pace at which digital services are built and deployed. This results in a stronger need for pre-existing code libraries to be used. Security must be incorporated into the workstream at some point without delaying the implementation of the new capabilities.

With cloud-native application development or a wrapper for legacy infrastructure, rapid deployment of new services is the driving force behind the transformation in the IT stack. Regarding service delivery, infrastructure has traditionally taken precedence over consumer interfaces.

As a result of the containerization of apps, the IT stack is now dominated by a framework for development operations. Because of the increasing demand for more advanced digital financial services from customers and the resulting requirement for more application development, the pace has accelerated.

As a result, we see a shift in emphasis, with the development team taking on greater responsibility for the IT stack. To keep up with the demand for new apps and services, open-source software is becoming an increasingly important part of the infrastructure. The necessity to protect customer and business assets and comply with data and security standards has not changed over time. On the other hand, open-source libraries are devoid of built-in security measures. As a result, financial institutions now face higher levels of risk in their operations.

Intense cyber strikes continue. It’s a fact of life in the financial sector: criminals are always looking for new ways to illegally profit from financial resources. It’s surprising how often the costs of these attacks and breaches are downplayed, even though this idea is widely recognized in conversation.

Fraud losses have been modelled for years, and financial institutions have invested substantially in efforts to reduce these costs. In the same way, it is necessary to accept the return on investment from data breaches. Data breaches cost the financial sector $5.86 million on average, according to Ponemon’s Cost of a Data Breach report. Cyberattacks on financial and insurance institutions are on the rise, with 1509 instances in 2019 alone, according to the Verizon 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report.

Organizations are struggling to fill unfilled positions in the cybersecurity field, even with an unlimited budget. By 2021, 3.5 million jobs are predicted to be unfilled, a 350% increase from 2013. As a result, financial institutions face an increasing need to invest in cybersecurity yet often lack the personnel to do so.

DevSecOps is the nexus point

The following is what may be deduced by putting these major financial services trends together:

Financial institutions are embracing the cloud transition to better engage their clientele by increasing the development of apps and infrastructure-as-code.
Code bases are progressively being shifted to third-party open-source libraries at this rate, resulting in increased risk.
To this day, cyberattacks on financial institutions are the most common.
Even with adequate funding, there is a shortage of security guards with the necessary qualifications.

Security concerns should not slow down the expansion of digital businesses. When it comes to helping financial institutions profit from DevOps, ISmile Technologies is a valuable resource. Our experienced staff delivers exceptional technical expertise across a range of products and services that provide actual value to your organization.

ISmile helps embed security at all stages of the delivery pipeline. We assist in minimizing expenses by delivering improved cooperation across teams and expediting time-to-market. The correct technological stack and tools to meet your governance, security, risk, and compliance needs are also part of our services.