What are the most common cloud integration issues in FinTech and how can you fix them?

Effective cloud integration in FinTech requires a careful balance between leveraging the cloud's benefits and mitigating its risks, particularly regarding security, compliance, and performance. By adopting a strategic approach to cloud integration and staying abreast of evolving technologies and regulations, FinTech companies can overcome these challenges and harness the full potential of cloud computing.

Common cloud integrations in Fintech involve APIs for payment gateways, identity verification, and data analytics. To address challenges: 1. Ensure thorough API documentation. 2. Implement robust error handling. 3. Regularly update integrations. 4. Use middleware solutions for seamless connectivity. 5. Employ monitoring tools for proactive issue resolution. 6. Conduct regular security audits and compliance checks.

Compliance with data privacy regulations, especially when data is transferred between different cloud services or between on-premises and cloud environments, can be challenging.

Bringing ease of use To avoid much intrusion/control (for consumer) by the app owner Protection from fraud/loss or build user confidence

Data lineage is essential for ensuring the quality, governance, and compliance of data. However, it can be incomplete, inaccurate, and complex. To address these issues, organizations should: Develop a data lineage plan: Start by understanding what data needs to be tracked, where it comes from, and how it is used. Track the databases, data warehouses, and data lakes, consider using data pipelines and other data sources to get a more complete picture. Automate the data lineage process: This will ensure that data lineage information is always up-to-date and accurate. Make data lineage accessible to everyone: Data lineage information should be accessible to everyone who needs it, including data analysts, data scientists, and business users.

Data breaches: access control, and intrusion detection systems. Compliance risks: Ensure compliance with data privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA by implementing policies and using compliance tools. Insecure APIs: Secure APIs with authentication, authorization, and encryption to prevent unauthorized access and data leaks. Misconfigurations: Regularly audit cloud configurations to identify and fix misconfigurations that could expose sensitive data. Insider threats: Implement strict access controls, monitor user activity, and educate employees on security practices to mitigate insider threats. Third-party risks: Carefully vet third-party vendors, assess their security practices, and implement data-sharing agreements to minimize risks.

Lack of importance to security in FinTech is slightly appalling. Sooner or later this will become a key issue. Security infrastructure cannot lean back on external alert mechanisms. Example: "No funds over 10K can be withdrawn, system limits it." There will be bots doing micro transactions of 0.25 cents a million times. Modernization of tradfi is key or will allow for modern systems to be vulnerable.

Technical immaturity: FinTech companies may be using new and untested technologies, which can lead to outages and other performance problems. Lack of experience: FinTech companies may not have the experience and expertise necessary to operate and maintain their systems reliably. Economic stability issues: Limited funding: FinTech companies may be underfunded, which can make it difficult for them to invest in their infrastructure and operations. Market volatility: The FinTech industry is highly volatile, and FinTech companies may be more vulnerable to economic downturns than traditional financial institutions.

Adding on to the latency point: Remember to optimize network configurations and adopt content delivery networks (CDNs) to reduce latency. Use cloud providers with data centers strategically located to minimize communication delays.

Operate in all areas that is not heavily reliant on traditional finance ecosystem. Scaling traditional systems to modern days tools with tens of wrappers is a killer. Innovate outside as much as possible. That would perform and scale super fast. A good example is Wise (formerly TransferWise)

A great ETL tool is going to be worth its weight in gold, as you will have many interim steps along the journey. Having no-code tooling ideally sitting in the Cloud but with the ability to connect to on-prem will be the route to glue different apis, data-models, data-formats and legacy adapters together.

Just lifting and shifting without a follow-on plan to refactor often brings inhibitive cost implications, so its important to have the insights into what tech components will need to be refactored to be more cloud-native to really take advantage of the elasticity and cost-effectiveness of things like serverless.

On the point of complexity, its important to ensure that your team is well-trained in cloud integration best practices and security measures to mitigate human errors and vulnerabilities. Also, make sure to egularly review cloud usage and adjust resources to control costs. Cloud management tools like AWS Cost Explorer can be used to track and optimise spending.

If your team is currently working remotely or looking to develop a hybrid model of office and remote work this session is for you. Any user with a device with an internet connection can access the cloud through their web browser. All updates take place in real-time. When a user accesses financial data through the cloud, all information presented is the most current and up-to-date, and all users have access to the same numbers. You control user permissions and access level. Cloud financial reporting helps companies save time. Data is more accurate, reporting is quicker and easier, and accounting professionals’ time is freed up for more strategic initiatives, like advisory services.