To send only necessary data across the WAN, duplicate data is replaced with a fingerprint and pointer. Reconstructing the original data with the duplicate data at the destination requires a disk cache. When WAN transport services are degraded, backup data transmission can take hours or fail due to terabyte data sets. In a post-COVID world, financial services IT departments face new challenges, such as the acceleration of digitisation to provide a better experience for customers and outperform the competition, as well as an increase in cybersecurity risks.
This white paper examines five typical use cases to demonstrate how an advanced SD-WAN platform combined with network security features can address the financial services industry’s challenges. Implementing an SD-WAN platform can help financial institutions accelerate their digital transformation efforts and lay the groundwork for a SASE architecture. Financial institutions can use this platform to streamline and secure their network infrastructure (Secure Access Service Edge).
Challenges Faced by Financial Services
Digitisation
Implementing new digital services and improving customer experience are two of the most difficult challenges facing financial services organisations. Traditional banks have reshaped their services to provide a unified experience to compete with the growing number of fintech startups offering a streamlined user experience and the virtualisation of exchanges due to the COVID crisis.
The cloud, particularly the public cloud, is integral to this evolution. Business application traffic is now centred on corporate data centres in this scenario. It entails providing each customer with a secure network connection with high uptime.
Financial services organisations are also experiencing workforce virtualisation as the number of remote workers increases and the number of brick-and-mortar locations decreases. As a result, they must also provide their employees with dependable and secure connectivity.
Network Infrastructure
Banks frequently use an out-of-date MPLS network to connect their branches to their headquarters. “With greater interconnectedness in the banking ecosystem, rapid adoption of new technologies, and continued reliance on legacy infrastructure designed for a different age,” Deloitte5 claims in its 2018 Banking Industry Outlook.
In reality, the network’s complexity was increased by the numerous mergers and acquisitions many banks had to deal with. Furthermore, customer-facing applications, office software, and other mission-critical software are migrating to the cloud. When cloud traffic is redirected to the corporate data centre for security reasons, bottlenecks occur. Branches frequently need help to provide consistent, high-quality voice-over IP and video services.
Alternatively, they need to be able to connect to the primary data centre consistently, making it impossible to load customer information onto their screens. Many banks find it challenging to expand their locations, open new branches, or connect to distant ATMs because a new MPLS circuit can take up to four months to provision. Furthermore, they may not have enough capacity to support backups and disaster recovery plans at remote locations. Banks frequently need more IT budgets, preventing them from upgrading their network infrastructure or purchasing new, costly MPLS lines to improve application quality of service.
Cybersecurity threats
Because of the sensitivity of their data, financial services organisations are a prime target for cybercrime and data breaches. Cyberattacks include money theft, social security numbers and other personally identifiable information, credit card number leaks, DDoS attacks, ransomware, and other crimes.
Banks are becoming increasingly concerned about cyberattacks as the volume of transactions increases. There was an increase in cyberattacks against financial institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a Deloitte study6 on the banking and capital markets outlook, most respondents intended to increase their spending on cybersecurity technology in 2021.
SD-Wan Use Cases Specific to Financial Institutions
Many of the abovementioned issues will be addressed through a large-scale enterprise effort. Based on a few use cases, let’s look at how implementing an advanced SD-WAN platform can help financial services more effectively address these challenges.
Use Case #1: Simplify Network Infrastructure While Reducing Costs
Many banks continue to pay for old-fashioned MPLS services, which frequently need more bandwidth, particularly at branch locations. Because cloud-hosted applications have grown proportionally over time, financial institutions that still use traditional router-based WAN architectures must backhaul cloud-destined traffic to the primary data centre for security reasons. As more mission-critical applications rely on the cloud, the additional delay (latency) caused by this makes it difficult for remote branches to manage business operations effectively.
Intention to Make a Profit Overlays are used to configure the policies that govern how EdgeConnect seamlessly and automatically directs application traffic. Link bonding policies include “high availability” for applications such as video over IP, which require the highest levels of performance and availability. Failover occurs instantly in a transport outage because data packets travel over one link. In contrast, error correction packets travel over the other.
Use Case #2: Quickly Spin up New Branches and Open New ATM’s
Retail banks grow by opening new branches to reach more customers and increase competition. Furthermore, banks are installing a new generation of ATMs in their branches, which include cutting-edge digital features such as live interactions and artificial intelligence (AI), necessitating more network bandwidth. On the other hand, a new MPLS service at a new location can take 60 to 120 days or longer to deploy. In contrast, broadband internet services can typically be provisioned within a few days.
The advanced features of Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN provide performance comparable to a private line over a broadband internet connection. EdgeConnect, as mentioned in the previous use case, uses path conditioning, dynamic path control, and local internet breakout to accelerate and secure traffic over open networks and 4/5G LTE connections.
Furthermore, Aruba EdgeConnect zero-touch provisioning makes connecting to and deploying a new site much easier (ZTP). An office manager with little IT experience can easily install the EdgeConnect SD-WAN appliance on the remote site.
The new appliance will self-register if it has been authenticated before being granted access to the SD-WAN fabric. Following successful authentication, the new appliance automatically downloads its configuration from Aruba Orchestrator, necessitating no further action from the site’s staff. Furthermore, centralised orchestration ensures that security and QOS regulations are applied consistently in the new branch.
Use Case #3: Accelerate Backups and Improve Disaster Recovery Plans
Most enterprise disaster recovery plans require data backup in one or more remote locations, sometimes hundreds of miles away. Data transfer slows as latency increases due to the increased distance between remote sites and backup locations. Due to terabyte data sets, backup data transmission can take hours or fail when WAN transport services degrade.
Fingerprints and pointers replace duplicate data to send only necessary data across the WAN. Reconstructing the original data with the duplicate data at the destination requires a disk cache. Data compression employs the LZ (Lempel-Ziv) compression algorithm to reduce the amount of data transmitted. The IP header and payload compress data.
Use Case #4: Secure Access and Protect Customer Data
Improve the perimeter security of financial institutions’ needs. Cloud transactions are increasing as financial services digitization accelerates. In reality, less traffic is going to corporate data centres for financial applications, and more is going to public clouds. To comply with regulations, financial institutions must protect customer data when using cloud applications.
Since remote work is now the norm, they must also provide secure access to their customers and employees from anywhere. Backhauling traffic from cloud applications to the primary data centre for security inspection is no longer an option due to user experience issues.
Key Takeaways
Investing in an SD-WAN for financial services can help you stay ahead of the competition and manage resources more effectively in the long run. Because of its ability to deliver increased security, more dependable performance, scalability, and automation capabilities, SD-WAN for financial services provides a nearly future-proof solution for optimizing one’s network infrastructure. So, why wait? Profit from the cost savings and improved customer experience offered by SD-potential WANs in the financial services industry today.
ICT Distribution Cambodia sells a wide range of HPE/Aruba products, including servers, storage, switches, networking, and software solutions. Our team will provide the most excellent service and help to our customers. So, what’s keeping you waiting? Reach out to our country manager, Bonal Sam bonal.sam@ictdistribution.net
