No industry has been more affected by today’s economic downturn than the financial industry. In many cases, institutions have been forced into consolidation and have requested government assistance as a matter of survival. Financial institutions feel pressured to begin showing business benefits almost immediately, and executives are increasingly turning to IT to find ways of realizing them.

Companies are also dealing with a broad increase in potential threats and risks to their security, as well as threats and risk to their compliance posture.

Many intruders will try to take advantage of any internal instability by relying on employee confusion, inconsistently-implemented policies, and the simple chaos of change.

But that increased security risk is just a part of the problem: organizations also face greatly-increased risk of internal security problems from disgruntled employees who suspect their job may be in jeopardy, are dissatisfied with changes in management, employee benefits, and other issues and are being contacted in droves by competitors seeking to take advantage of the employees’ additional stresses and pressures.

IT must help counter these threats by becoming more vigilant, applying more consistent access controls, and providing more comprehensive auditing and tracking. Yet they must somehow accomplish this with fewer people and with less money.

The key strategy is to simply maximize efficiency.

Today financial institutions depend on technology more than ever before, and the most successful ones will use it as a partner to help them thrive through the economic downturn. Now is the time to move the focus from cost-cutting to demonstrating how technology can add business value.

Source: www.bankinfosecurity.com

Author:
Don Jones is a co-founder of Concentrated Technology (ConcentratedTech.com), a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Award recipient, and the author of more than thirty books on information technology.