Data Storage Solutions for Government & Public Sector
The process of digital transformation has affected almost every sphere of our life, which became…
Read MoreTechnological development in today’s business increasingly depends on the requirements imposed by the data storage protection regulations of the sectors concerned. These specific requirements are closely related to and determined by the type of data it manages and the way this data should be stored. The financial sector is no exception. Moreover, it handles data under specific and strict regulations to make it safe and monitored. Banking, investment management, insurance, payment systems, finance technologies, or audits and accounting are the main branches managing financial data regulated by federal, state, or local authorities. The purpose number one is to keep it safe and available at any time. Purpose number two is to protect consumers, who entrust their funds to financial institutions and these institutions themselves, who manage funds on behalf of consumers, various companies, or the government. However, this is not the only challenge for the person who manages the data storage where the financial data is kept – the administrator – or the whole financial sector. Besides data safety and availability there are also compliance and scalability objectives. So let’s dive deeper into this subject to understand it better.
To understand what caused the need for financial regulations worldwide, let’s look at the brief history of financial disasters. Economic development due to colonialism, the rising significance of the financial sector, and the lack of market rules caused major economic crises. The most known and one of the oldest is the Credit Crisis in 1772 and the Great Crash (or the Crash of 29) in 1929. More modern market disruptions worth mentioning are the Asian Crisis (or the Asian Contagion) in 1997 that affected Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, and the Philippines, but also the Russian and Brazil economies and raised a question about what should be the government role in finance market control. Last but not least was the Worldwide Financial Crisis in 2007, which started in the US. Most of you, dear readers, lived through one of the two last crises. As you can see, the financial market needs to constantly evaluate and apply the appropriate rules, so none of such disasters happen again. It seems evident that after a couple of years of validity, the regulations must be refactored and applied again in order to meet the new financial sector requirements. The modern financial market changes dynamically, forcing the responsible authorities to adapt the legislation rapidly.
All of the above crises started in the USA, Europe, and Asia, but affected the entire world. It doesn’t mean that it never happened elsewhere, of course, however, these are the most recognizable financial market disasters. Let’s then focus on some of the regulations related to these regions.
The USA has the Securities and Exchange Commission all companies, stock brokers, and dealers are obliged to follow. It regulates, amends, and updates the most significant rules of the financial sector. One of them – SEC Rule 17a-4 – refers to the method of keeping physical and virtual records (like assets, liabilities, capital accounts, income, and expenses) for securities broker-dealers:
In the European Union, there’s the MiFID (Markets in Financial Instruments Directive) II, which, according to Forbes, contains around 30,000 pages specifying the financial market requirements, and determining how the records should be kept. The most paramount are:
Asia on the other hand is an exception. There is no single regulation for the whole region – each country has its own legislation regarding. However, central bank regulations and capital requirements set by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision were a template for The Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering. So basically, in regard to the financial record and data keeping, each country works on its own, but under the watchful eye of FATF. Due to the political system, the Chinese government ensures compliance with business rules on its own. Highly developed countries like Japan or Singapore also have their own robust regulations to guarantee personal data protection and overall transparency. Private companies are mostly responsible for managing their records and storing data, but they must comply with government regulations.
Taking all this into consideration and focusing on the financial physical and virtual record keeping, you can now see for yourself why safety, compliance, scalability, along with data availability, are the main challenges for this sector, no matter if it’s banking, investment management, insurance, payment systems, finance technologies, or audits and accounting. It’s easy to see that all mentioned regions have similar requirements. Thus, we can say without hesitation – the challenges for data storing are similar for all.
The basic challenge this sector needs to deal with is compliance. Each institution, no matter which country needs to obey certain rules, so the financial sector is stable. Inconsistency or deviations from accepted standards are likely to affect not only the institution concerned but the whole country, and other regions too. Like in the previously mentioned Asian Contagion, which affected the Russian (Europe and Asia) and Brazilian (South America) economies. This relates to data keeping as well. If it would not be kept in a non-rewritable, non-erasable format, the outcome can be tremendous. Incorrect financial reporting or data manipulation may result in poor business choices, harmful reputation, financial setbacks, fines, legal consequences, and even bankruptcy. Moreover, data keeping without the immutability requirement may lead to dirty money laundering, which makes mob or terrorism existence and operations much easier. Frauds would also be much easier to achieve. Ask yourself – who loses on this most? We – consumers who work hard to provide a reasonable standard of safe living.
As you can imagine, storing so much data for a strictly regulated time being (a couple of years on average) requires a flexible storage system scalability. If financial organizations are obliged to keep their and their customers’ data for such a long period, they have to maintain suitable space of storage that can easily be expanded or decreased. Without this, finance institutions have to deal with limitations in storing, analyzing, and processing data with expected efficiency and according to rules – e.g., audit requirements. The finance sector cannot afford this as it increases the costs of maintenance, reduces productivity and time of data processing. And again – the higher the maintenance costs, the higher will also be the price for consumers whose data is being kept. And nobody wants to pay more for managing their finances.
Last but not least is the data safety and availability. It refers to all the above-mentioned challenges – compliance and scalability. It seems crucial to look at all these challenges as interwoven. If data would not be kept with required compliance and efficient scalability, these records’ availability would not be possible. So to make them fully available, they need to be safe.
What does ”safe” mean in terms of the financial sector? Most of all, no downtime is acceptable. This industry relies on the frequent use of information and records. These are frequently used data, which are required to process transactions or keep hot (frequently used), and cold (rarely used) data, i.e. needed when controlling authority, during. audits, need to access it after a couple of years since it was produced. Again, the whole architecture of the storage system has to be easily adjusted and managed, without drawing a loss in compliance, scalability, safety, and data availability. It also helps in providing anomaly detection, which allows to recognize non-standard behaviors on the market to prevent fraud. Similarly, customer analysis is also easier – analyzing consumer behaviors and trends based on stored data allows to protect consumers in banking, finance technologies, or finance systems. Therefore, data has to be easily and continuously available, so this challenge is no less important for a storage administrator
In Open-E JovianDSS, there are several functionalities and features making it a great system for financial data-keeping. Let’s see how it meets the challenges of this sector.
As you can see, the financial sector is a wide subject, also in regards to storing data. Preparing the whole infrastructure is not an easy task even for a specialist. No matter if it’s banking, investment management, insurance, payment systems, finance technologies, or audits and accounting – data storage administrators need to be ready to fulfill multiple tasks, lots of requirements, and regulations, specific to different regions. But let’s not forget what the goal is – without it, money and funds would not be safe. This goal works for our profit.
Try Open-E JovianDSS for free for 60 days with a fully functional trial version under this link.
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