FinTech security is not only a technical challenge, but also a collaborative one. As a FinTech professional, you need to work with other departments to ensure the security of your products, services, and data. In this article, you will learn some of the most effective ways to collaborate with other departments for FinTech security.
The first step to collaborate with other departments for FinTech security is to understand the business goals and objectives of your organization. What are the main value propositions, customer segments, and revenue streams of your FinTech products or services? How do they align with the overall vision and mission of your organization? By understanding the business goals, you can communicate the security benefits and risks in a way that resonates with other stakeholders.
In my experience, Effective collaboration with other departments for FinTech security involves establishing a security culture, cross-departmental training, collaborative policy development, regular communication, incident response planning, vendor risk management, access controls, data classification, compliance monitoring, audits, security champions, security awareness campaigns, secure product development, MFA implementation, secure communication, data retention policies, threat intelligence sharing, board-level involvement, testing, and feedback mechanisms. This ensures that security is a shared responsibility and financial data is protected effectively.
one thing I have found to be a real success is mandatory training of every staff from every department and making them understand the importance of legitimate usage of technology even if someone is not a tech freak. Auditing the knowledge of every employee via simulated attacks and finding out the weak/careless/vulnerable mindset and scrutinizing such minds (may be not monitory) but definitely putting non-harmful fines which enables them to be serious about the mandatory training.
Effective cybersecurity programs are characterized by a unique alignment with the organisation's mission. Key stakeholders understand the business value propositions, and the critical operational activities that support these propositions. Furthermore, there exists a cybersecurity strategy that helps the business create more value by reducing any losses as a result of cyber attacks.
The next step is to identify the security requirements for your FinTech products or services. What are the legal, regulatory, and contractual obligations that you need to comply with? What are the industry standards and best practices that you need to follow? What are the specific threats and vulnerabilities that you need to address? By identifying the security requirements, you can define the scope and priorities of your security activities and deliverables.
Apart from the financial and technology departments the legal teams tend to add significant value to the security requirements. Certain countries such as the States, Canada, UK, etc. tend to have strict legal and regulatory frameworks that have to be adhered to in order to be compliant within the jurisdiction. Usually, Anti-money laundering (AML) and Anti-terrorist Financing (ATF) laws play a crucial role.
The third step is to establish the security roles and responsibilities for your FinTech products or services. Who are the key decision-makers, owners, and users of your FinTech products or services? Who are the security champions, experts, and advisors in your organization? Who are the external partners, vendors, and auditors that you need to collaborate with? By establishing the security roles and responsibilities, you can clarify the expectations and accountabilities of each party involved.
The fourth step is to implement the security processes and tools for your FinTech products or services. What are the security policies, procedures, and guidelines that you need to follow? What are the security tools, platforms, and frameworks that you need to use? What are the security metrics, indicators, and reports that you need to monitor and measure? By implementing the security processes and tools, you can ensure the consistency and quality of your security practices and outputs.
In my experience the best way is to conduct simulated attacks via appropriate tools to test the knowledge and awareness of the users within the environment and keep remediating identified vulnerabilities continuously.
The fifth step is to communicate the security status and feedback for your FinTech products or services. How do you inform and update other departments about the security progress and results of your FinTech products or services? How do you collect and address the security feedback and suggestions from other departments? How do you celebrate and recognize the security achievements and improvements of your FinTech products or services? By communicating the security status and feedback, you can build trust and rapport with other departments.
The sixth and final step is to learn and improve the security culture for your FinTech products or services. How do you evaluate and review the security performance and outcomes of your FinTech products or services? How do you identify and implement the security lessons and opportunities for your FinTech products or services? How do you foster and promote the security awareness and education for your FinTech products or services? By learning and improving the security culture, you can create a positive and proactive security environment for your FinTech products or services.
Establishing a robust culture starts from having strong leadership support. This helps the organization to build a security culture across the different business units. The key areas of focus are processes, people and technology to have a 360 information security system (ISM) that responds to the organization needs and the context of the organization.
Awareness plays a significant role to ensure all departments understand thier role, risks associated, complying to regulations.