Eight Essential Steps Every Fintech Startup Should Follow to Secure Data

If you’re starting up a business in the financial technology sector, one of your largest concerns will be the security of your system. While your company’s main goal will be to help improve the efficiency of the various financial services consumers use on a daily basis, you also have to make certain those consumers can trust you with their private financial data. If your system isn’t secure enough and hackers compromise it, you’ll find that there’s almost nothing you can say or do to repair the damage to your reputation. That’s why it’s vital to make certain your data is secure from the get-go. Here are 8 essential steps that you should follow to protect this sensitive information.

1) Make Certain that all Consumer Data is Stored and Transmitted Securely

The first thing you must do is to make certain that you’re storing and transmitting all data in a secure method. That’s assuming you need to store the information—if you have no need of storing a consumer’s sensitive data, you shouldn’t. If you do, however, it needs to be stored for only as long as you need it. Experts recommend that you purge unnecessary data every three months. You should also store any account numbers using high level encryption methods. This also must be done when transmitting them across any open networks. Use encryption and security protocols like SSH, IPSec and SSL/TLS to ensure that your information is safe.

2) Ensure Your Network is Secure

As a business dealing with financial information, your network must be secure. That means you need to have strong firewalls and make certain that you restrict any traffic that comes from distrusted hosts and networks. Employees who bring computers and other devices to work need to have strong security programs installed on them and must utilize the same secure login processes that the office computers use. Always change the default passwords, customize security settings as needed and make use of intrusion prevention systems such as Snort to alert you to any potential hackers.

3) Regularly Update Your System

Antivirus programs, malware scanners and other security systems must be regularly updated to ensure that they’re scanning for the latest viruses and other malicious programs. Hackers quickly learn how to zero-day exploit the latest firewalls, so it’s something of an arms race as security companies work to stay one step ahead of them. If you’re not updating your system to the newest versions, you’re leaving your customer’s vital information open to being stolen.

4) Avoid the Public Cloud

While many businesses have taken to storing information in the cloud, you always want to make sure you’re using a secure private cloud for any financial data you have. Public cloud storage is much more likely to have lower security features or to be targeted for an attack. With a private cloud, you have more control over the security and can more easily see who is accessing your data.

5) Create a Comprehensive Information Security Policy and Train Employees to Follow it

Having all the security measures in the world can mean little if your employees do not understand how to use them or do not actively follow your security policy. You should work with IT experts to create a comprehensive security policy and then implement training sessions to make certain every employee understands what is required of them. This policy should be reviewed regularly to identify any new security vulnerabilities and risks and then be updated to address those issues.

Every employee needs to be trained in all areas of IT security, even those who may not have access to any consumer data. This training needs to be more than simply requiring employees to read a section in the employee handbook on computer security—it needs to be thorough, and refresher training should be done annually. Even those who do not access secure data can unknowingly introduce malware or viruses into the system if they don’t fully understand network security.

6) Restrict Access to Personal Consumer Data

While some people in your company will need access to consumer data, not everyone does. Employees who do not need this information should not have access to it. In addition to limiting any accidental breaches that could come from employees, it will also help make it easier to see who accessed what information. All employees should also be trained on how to create and use strong passwords or other login information to keep this data as secured as possible. A policy on what data can be removed from the office should also be outlined and enforced.

7) Test your Security Policies and Systems while Monitoring your Network

As mentioned earlier, hackers and other malcontents are always working on new ways to get around firewalls and other security systems. To combat this, you have to regularly test your system to search for any previously overlooked vulnerabilities. These tests need to be done for both external and internal threats—sometimes viruses and other security issues can come from inside your own network, so you need to make certain you’re testing for that possibility, too. Once discovered, they must be addressed before anyone can take advantage of them.

8) Conduct audits

While addressing your own security vulnerabilities is vital to keeping your consumers’ private data secure, it’s not the only system you need to audit. You also need to make certain any partners you work with have the highest security possible. If they do not, the data you send to or receive from them may be compromised. Your own strong security systems will be pointless if the data is stolen from one of your partners. You’ll want to make certain those partners have strong security policies in place, train their employees on security and have adequate firewalls, antivirus programs and other tools.

By following these eight steps to securing your consumers’ private financial data, you’ll build a reputation as a secure, trusted company to work with. That reputation, once lost, can be very difficult to regain, so it’s important that you do everything you can to make certain you never have to face that task.