Cloud Security Watch: Rising Number of Financial Firms Invest in Cloud Backup

Financial organizations are responsible for volumes of sensitive customer data, which require the ability to protect this information wherever it resides, whether in the data center, on desktops, or mobile devices such as laptops, tablets or smartphones. Cloud computing is becoming more attractive to organizations looking to speed service delivery and increase IT efficiencies while supporting information management, service management and service-oriented architecture (SOA) initiatives.

In fact, the financial services industry is predicted to increase its investment in cloud computing to $21.9 billion (or five percent) by the end of 2012, according to research firm CEB TowerGroup.

As an example of this trend, cloud backup software provider Asigra says more financial services firms from around the world are utilizing its cloud backup software to improve security and compliance of their data protection efforts.

The Toronto, Canada-based company offers private, public or hybrid cloud models which bring the advantages of cloud computing while providing a framework for the compliant, secure and efficient recovery of data when and where it is required, according to Erik Smith, IT manager for Purdy Insurance Agency. Smith said the firm opted for Asigra’s services based on its compliance ratings with federal regulators.

“Sensitive data in any company’s backup set is sure to be just as critical as the information in their production environment. Therefore, the security of backup data should receive equally high levels of protection,” Smith said. “With encryption in-flight and at-rest from cradle to grave, we trust Asigra-based backup services by Data Storage Corporation to meet the strict standards of FIPS 140-2 certification by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) –making it the right choice for us.”

The Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) is an internationally recognized standard for cryptography products, developed by the United States Federal government for use by all non-military government agencies and by government contractors.

Asigra officials said that certification of its cloud backup software platform encompasses 11 areas related to the secure design of Asigra Cloud Backup, from physical and logical integrity of the software to system level functionality such as user access control and key management.

Governmental and corporate compliance, in addition to public assurance that information is held in strict confidence, are top among priorities in the financial services sector, a highly regulated industry.

“As the need for cloud backup and recovery grows for the financial services industry, organizations have to ensure the solution they choose provides the necessary level of security and compliance,” said Eran Farajun, executive vice president of Asigra. “For organizations that have strict compliance requirements, such as Sarbanes-Oxley, Basel II or Basel III, our cloud backup solution, the first to be FIPS 140-2 approved, provides them with the security and peace of mind they require.”

Not only is data security critical in the financial services sector, but also from an operational standpoint cloud backup is important in the case of an outage.

“While data security is a top concern, recovery of data in the event a system goes down is equally as important from an operational perspective,” said Guy Sanfilippo, director of information technology at American Federation of Musicians & Employers’ Pension Fund. “With Asigra’s Recovery Assurance delivered by our service provider, Data Storage Corporation, I can relax knowing that our data is not only locked behind military grade security but can be recovered at any time to any place.”

“Even without experiencing a true disaster recovery event, I have had the need to restore mailboxes from our Exchange Server, databases from our database servers and data files from our file servers,” Sanfilippo added. “In every case the restore ran quickly and smoothly. The ability to restore data from any backup on a retention schedule is a great comfort.”