BS BFSI Summit: ‘Cybersecurity took a back seat in post-Covid Cloud rush’
According to experts, most banks and other financial services providers are still grappling with cybersecurity challenges arising from the rapid migration to cloud environments in the post-pandemic years, increasingly stringent regulations and emerging technologies.
A panel discussion on the topic ‘Using Cloud and Data Centers to Mitigate Disruption and Address Security Challenges’ at the Business Standard BFSI Insight Summit in Mumbai on Monday highlighted obstacles such as skills shortages, disorganized cloud adoption and compliance burdens as key issues facing the industry .
Ranjeet Bellary, Partner at EY, commented: “During the post-pandemic era, digital transformation accelerated at unprecedented levels. Many customers quickly turned to platforms such as the cloud to enable remote working and ensure accessibility for their customers. Naturally, cybersecurity took a back seat as business priorities took precedence.”
Bellary pointed out that while the cloud provided flexibility and agility to significantly accelerate transformation, cybersecurity is still trying to catch up. He emphasized the need for shared responsibility during the transition to on-Cloud storage.
Rajesh Mirjankar, Managing Director and CEO of Kiya.ai, noted that Indian banks are well equipped for a robust digital transformation, thanks to the foundations laid by digital public goods such as Aadhaar and the Unified Payments Interface, which gradually introduced rules for the sector.
“When looking at Web 3 environments or artificial intelligence (AI)-based decision making, the cloud is preferred because of the scale of data and decision making. Banks must ensure that their systems provide data encryption at rest and in transit to the cloud. They can also explore data segmentation and adopt a hybrid model,” said Mirjankar.
He added that while banks have stood the test of time in digitalization, they still rely on decades-old data storage designs.
“As customers rapidly move to the cloud, technology consolidation is crucial to optimize technical debt. Moreover, when migrating data to the cloud, security should not be considered an afterthought. Many organizations tend to build in security instead of building in security, and we should avoid that,” said Raghavendra Singh, global head of the Cloud security Center of Excellence at Tata Consultancy Services’ cybersecurity practice.
Sujeeth Williams, sales director at NTT Global Data Centers, issued a warning: “While there is significant demand for data center services, it is essential that individuals do their research before entering this sector.”
NTT operates 16 live data centers across the country with 204 megawatts (Mw) of information technology (IT) loads, and plans to add another 80 Mw of IT loads to its data center capacity by March 2024.
The panelists believe that Generative AI (GenAI), the latest buzzword in the technology landscape, can be a huge asset in cybersecurity by increasing efficiency.
Prakash Bharath, Director, Freshworks, the Indian and South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, highlighted the benefits of adopting GenAI in their solutions and tools, citing cost savings for customers and increased efficiency for employees.
“We started investing in AI in 2018, with a focus on customer and employee experience. GenAI plays a crucial role in achieving this. A recent Forrester report states that customers can save $2.1 million annually by using GenAI tools – an immediate cost savings,” he explains.
Bharath shared examples where Freshworks has seen the impact of GenAI, such as automating incident summaries in customer support, significantly reducing time spent.
“It used to take five minutes; now it happens automatically. A common question is how long does it take to deploy GenAI tools, and we can do that in just 10 minutes,” he added.
In the case of data centers, Williams stated that NTT, which is investing $3.5 billion in global research and development, is spending a significant portion on AI. They use AI for predictive monitoring, reducing downtime, energy efficiency and optimizing cooling systems.
Bellary emphasized that using GenAI in cybersecurity will help address the skills gap in the sector. By 2023, nearly 80 percent of breaches are expected to involve some form of cloud data. So there are plenty of challenges in the field of safety. Using technology to predict malicious patterns and identify threat actors can quickly detect incidents with GenAI, proving very useful.
“It will only strengthen the role of a SOC (Security Operations Center) expert,” he said.