The digital “privacy screen” for Microsoft’s Azure Cloud platform improves security for banks which includes the hardening of data access using methods such as encrypting data at rest when stored in blob storage, or in databases, etc. And encrypting the data in transit between data centers, across machines, and throughout the network. Even if customers don’t encrypt the data they provide to Banks, Microsoft encrypts it anyway.

Privacy must go even further

When we think about data at rest and data in transit, these data stages are only 2 of the 3 really important stages to find data in. The third stage is where Microsoft is using its engineering prowess to encrypt data that is in use during computation. Now, why is that important to a banking business executive or technology executive?

Bottom line, safeguarding data is an increasingly complex endeavor in today’s banking world. External threats are more sophisticated, and customers are becoming increasingly vigilant about how their data is both stored and utilized.

Did you know?

Data fraud or theft are now two of the top five risks CEOs are most likely to face according to the latest World Economic Forum report on global risks. Almost 80 percent of organizations are introducing digitally fueled innovation faster than their ability to secure it against cyberattackers. When it comes to banks innovating by leveraging current on-premises infrastructure, the vulnerabilities exponentially increase.

Executing business models on top of secure data

The question is no longer “how secure is the public cloud”, but instead, “how comparatively secure are legacy systems?” Microsoft Azure shares the burden of compliance and security, offering expertise that can be hard to find in-house. As banks continue to digitally transform, they have aspirations to build the ultimate curated experience for customers by serving as the financial nucleus, dependent upon the accessibility and richness of relationships, personal, behavior, and social data. The channels used to collect such data during in-person visits or online banking sessions like contact, demographic, geographic, and governmental data, can also include their third-party partners for use of cookies, web beacons, or other technologies to collect and store other information about sites visited. Banks are partnering with third-party software providers to leverage more sophisticated solutions and reduce the time-to-market for products and services. Security during computation is even more important when data is traversing from one-third party to the next.

The bank is in full control of its data

That data collection and use by the bank is covered by Azure Confidential Computing – which uses a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) or “enclaves,” increasing the security of application code and data, and offering cloud-based attestation that is simple and highly available through advanced security features, granular privacy controls, and cloud-optimized specifically for financial services. Azure Confidential Computing helps to secure the bank’s data while it’s in use. Azure is the first cloud platform to protect the confidentiality and integrity of data while it’s processed in the cloud. It is the cornerstone of our ‘Confidential Cloud’ vision, which includes the following principles:

• Mitigate top data breach threats
• Customers are in complete control of their data whether it’s at rest, in transit, or in compute
• Code running in the cloud is protected and verifiable by the customer
• Data and code are opaque to the cloud platform or put another way the cloud platform is outside of the trusted computing base

What’s the bottom line?

Today, it is becoming increasingly important to understand the full information data supply chain to ensure adequate data protection – even while being analyzed. Azure Confidential Computing takes data security to the next level and protects data while it’s processed in the public cloud through the use of secure enclaves in banks. This security capability provides the missing piece for full data protection at rest, in transit, and use.

Source: https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/

Global iTS is a leading Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP and CRM Partner with offices all over GCC (Bahrain, Saudi Arabia KSA, Oman “Muscat”, UAE “Dubai”, and Kuwait), with domain expertise in Financial Services Sector Digital Transformation like” Retail Banking, Commercial Banking, Insurance Providers, Private Equity, and Investment Banking.