Compete to win with agility, security, and compliance
Financial Services Needs to Stay Ahead of the Pack
The financial services sector was an early adopter of digital technologies as banks shifted focus from branch-based operations to mobile banking, but financial firms now face fast-moving and agile competition from born-in-the-cloud FinTech companies. In a recent survey, most of the respondents (58%) said that FinTech is a driver for digital transformation, and 51% think that FinTech will take market share. (1) Faced with continuous evolution, FinSev firms must adopt DevSecOps to improve operations and competitiveness.
Challenges of Adopting DevSecOps
While adopting modern digital strategies, FinServ faces challenges similar to other less aggressive sectors:
- Incompatible DevOps and SecOps tools. For example, AppSec tools and testing require human-intensive and lengthy timeframes. These characteristics are not compatible with agile DevOps and push nearly 52% of companies to sacrifice cybersecurity for speed. (2)
- Developers’ knowledge gap. Despite the heightened awareness of the need for robust security, developers with security expertise are the hardest to find. About 44% of developers have not trained in coding security (3) while nearly 61% of FinServ companies find it very difficult to attract the right technical talent. (4)
- Difficulty inserting Security into CI/CD. With DevSecOps, security becomes part of the process and not something added towards the end. While the importance of security integration is well recognized, and 56% of companies say that they utilize integrated security controls throughout their DevOps process, things are not that rosy. (5) Around 57% of companies say that their operations team pushes back on security best practices. (6)
Adopting DevSecOps is Rewarding
While challenging, adopting any new technology brings significant rewards that outweigh any difficulties in adopting and deploying the latest technologies and associated work processes.
- Faster product releases. Applying DevOps’ automation and streamlined incremental improvements to SecOps enables testing smaller pieces of code in shorter times, resulting in rapid product releases. This work is critical for financial services, where 54% of businesses deploy database changes daily, weekly, or on-demand. 7 Agility and responsiveness to rising customer expectations are vital for FinServ competitiveness.
- Reduced cost. Product quality improvements with process automation and early error detection lead to avoiding or addressing problems before they mushroom into larger ones. Higher quality and secured products coupled with faster releases deliver significant IT operations cost savings.
- Improved security. Adopting DevSecOps infuses security into the app development process. Successful integration of security requires incorporating it into the DevOps pipeline and not adding it later. A robust cloud security posture eliminates or reduces malicious attack-related expenses, lost revenues, potential reputation damage, and customer loss.
- Better regulatory compliance. It is no secret that ensuring security and compliance requirements in software releases is challenging, as mentioned by 46% of companies.8 In addition to DevSecOps, utilizing AI/ML tools to analyze data helps ensure that compliance requirements remain current and enforced.
- Better work culture. DevSecOps facilitates a collaborative work environment that brings teams and processes together to achieve the common goals of building higher quality products faster in a secure and compliant cloud environment. DevSecOps teams are also responsive to customers’ expectations and quickly deliver needed fixes or new features.
Taos DevOps for FinServ Difference
Taos DevOps Services use a cloud-native and automation-first approach to help financial services companies improve product quality, reduce costs, and quickly embrace DevOps. Using its experience working with many financial services companies, Taos built the Taos FinServ DevOps Toolchain that provides an integrated set of DevOps tools and technologies best suited for highly regulated financial industry environments. The Taos FinServ DevOps Toolchain takes the guesswork out of choosing your tools.
Next Steps
Technology moves fast, and working with a business partner experienced in DevOps and financial services like Taos is the best route towards successful digital transformation with minimal to no business risks. With 500+ experts, partnerships with leading cloud providers, and 2,000+ clients, Taos can help you every step of the way from ideation to execution and support.
- 1, 4, 8. Contino 2020. “The State of DevOps in Financial Services.”
- 2,3,6. Threat Stack and Pagerduty 2021. “Webinar: 52% of Companies Sacrifice Cybersecurity for Speed.”
- 5. ESG August 2020. “Modern Application Development Security.”
- 7. Aspire Systems, October 2020. “DevSecOps – The Beacon to Optimize Banking Security.”