If you thought cloud storage is only for private companies, you can’t be any farther from the truth. In fact, many government agencies, including data-sensitive organizations like the US Army and FBI, are moving their operations to the cloud, mainly because of the many benefits that come with it. Some financial organizations have also started looking into cloud, thanks to the Financial Industry Regulation Authority (FINRA)’s move to adopt cloud in a big way.
At the recently concluded Amazon’s conference, Steve Randich, the executive VP of FINRA, opined that cybersecurity is better in the cloud than in private data centers, and this is why it’s a good idea for financial companies to move their sensitive and confidential data to the cloud. This step has allayed the fear of many financial institutions who believe that data security is one of the biggest problems of cloud storage. A few years back, cloud security was in its nascent stages, so these fears made sense. However today, cloud security has improved by leaps and bounds, and these advancements make cloud one of the safest places to park your data.
These reasons are exactly why FINRA chose Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its service provider. Randich trusts cloud so much that the organization moved its primary and mission critical applications to AWS in the first move itself. There was no question of pilot testing by moving smaller applications. FINRA’s surveillance application alone processes more data on a single day, typically around 75 billion events a day, and this is more than what credit card companies like Visa and MasterCard process over a period of six months. Such is the magnitude of the data handled by FINRA, and it’s heartening to see that all of it is done in the cloud now!
In addition, FINRA has to search through this data and run advanced queries to identify insider trading or any other wrongful trading from this vast amount of data, and AWS makes it possible with its advanced query tools that come with a simple interface. As a result, the search process is greatly simplified, and at the same time, the results are accurate – something that is a must for FINRA’s operations.
This successful adoption of cloud by FINRA has boosted the confidence levels of other financial providers too. Randich says that he gets queries from many financial organizations about their cloud adoption, and is confident that more companies will take to the cloud in the near future. Already CapitalOne has partnered with AWS to move its applications to the cloud, and it won’t be long before other financial companies also follow suit.
Such a move augurs well for not just AWS, but for the cloud industry as a whole. Traditionally, financial companies are the slowest to adopt cloud, and it looks like cloud has broken this final frontier too. Given this scenario, it’s no surprise that many cloud providers including Google and Microsoft, are creating new products and entering into partnerships with other service providers to offer top of the line cloud experience for its customers.
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