ACyber security continues to be a top priority for the financial services industry. This is even more important due to the multiple regulations that national authorities and financial regulators are applying all over the world.   One of the new and most stringent regulations is the Digital Operational Resilience Act, or DORA, a European Union regulation that creates a binding, comprehensive information, and communication technology risk management framework. Banks, financial entities, and technology service providers need to implement and follow those standards by January 17th, 2025.

Another regulation that covers cyber security risk is general data protection regulation (GDPR). The aim of those regulations is to develop a single regulatory and supervisory rulebook for information and communication technology (ICT) operational resilience, where all firms must ensure they can withstand, respond to, and recover from all types of ICT-related disruptions and threats, including cyber incidents.  Beside the mandatory aspects of following those regulations, there is an increased awareness of the protection of data integrity and the impact for the data breached financial institution both in term of operation, reputation, and competitiveness. 

AFor many years, banks and other financial institutions relied on monolithic in-house developed applications. One of the reasons was the large usage of mainframe platforms to support back-end operations and the reliability of these platforms during those years. The introduction of the cloud with all the benefits that it brings (in term of cost, agility, increased time to market and efficiency) is pushing this industry to quickly modernize their legacy core banking systems.  

The advantage of new containerized applications is increased operational efficiency,and better integration with 3rd party platforms and applications. The cloud also brings benefits such as,automation, AI, increased security and cost reduction, and an improved customer experience.