Connectivity Counts: Why Smaller FSIs Worry about Secure, Remote Access

Nimble but Smaller FSIs adapt to change quickly, but have fewer resources

Not every financial service institution (FSI) is the size of a global bank with hundreds of thousands of workers. Frequently, boutique investment firms, insurance providers, and regional or local banks have only a fraction of the workers of their larger counterparts.

In our discussions with many of these more compact organizations, they often spoke of slightly different concerns than those of larger banks. Smaller budgets, fewer staff members, and less time to learn about cutting-edge technologies like isolation were constraints that dissuaded them from adopting new security services.

The new normal of remote working created additional pressures. While smaller FSIs were more nimble than larger FSIs to push remote working, they frequently did not have the bandwidth to handle the number of connections necessary to provide reliable, secure network access.

Moving home was easy, providing security was hard

Remote working was the natural progression following the requirement of many organizations to meet the isolation and safe-distance standards imposed across the world to combat COVID-19. Smaller or decentralized organizations inherently have less infrastructure than larger ones, so the transition to a fully remote workforce was less challenging initially.

However, working remotely inherently carries a major risk—namely, the distance away from other workers.

Credential theft is on the rise because remote workers may fail to check with coworkers or their IT department when interacting with suspicious Internet content. That problem will only increase as more workers remain at home.

Importantly, the time spent battling common phishing issues diverts attention and resources away from hunting down other finance-specific threats like money laundering or fraudulent transactions.

Safe connectivity requires a secure cloud proxy

FSIs moving to remote working were immediately faced with the issue of providing security to their entire workforce. It’s easy to protect your employees when they are physically located in the same building behind a common firewall and use a VPN for secured connections. Before work from home became the new normal, companies typically allotted enough bandwidth for just 10 percent of their workforce to dial in.

The new necessity for everyone to connect from anywhere challenged that model. As many FSIs learned, 100 percent of your workforce cannot pack into VPN tunnels designed to accommodate 10 percent of the traffic.

To address this problem, a cloud proxy with isolation enables admins to provide both security and ease of connectivity. A globally accessible cloud proxy allows users to connect to the network from wherever they are. Isolation greatly enhances the security of a cloud proxy by negating the threat of malware and phishing. The combination of these technologies helps FSIs meet the connectivity needs of end-users while keeping the network safe from the most common cyberthreats.

To learn more about how Menlo Security helps smaller FSIs meet their remote working needs, please contact us at [email protected] or connect with your account representative.