How Can a Board Portal Improve the Cybersecurity of Financial Institutions?

Security should be the utmost concern for all financial institutions for various reasons. Top on the list is to protect customer and client assets. By strengthening cybersecurity measures, financial companies can ensure that customer data is protected — eventually securing trust from stakeholders.

This calls for financial boards to integrate advanced security measures across all governance practices, including meetings and data management. Given such an impact, how can a board portal help in implementing robust and infallible security measures in place?

Cyber Risks in the Financial Sector Over the Years

As cyberattackers are now getting more creative in strategizing attacks and breaches, the financial industry has become one of the popular targets. Such attacks include third-party vendor threats and web application attacks. A slight flaw in the cybersecurity system can set off a chain of events that can turn into a major cybersecurity issue. Among the notable cybersecurity issues in the industry involved JPMorgan Chase and Desjardins Group.

JPMorgan Chase’s Client Data Breach

JPMorgan Chase is one of the largest investment banks in the US. In 2014, it was involved in one of the biggest security breaches in the industry. The breach involved millions of personal and business accounts. Sensitive personal information — names, email addresses, and addresses — stored in the bank’s system were compromised. It took one month before the breach was discovered.

A flaw in the bank’s system security measures caused the breach. Typically, financial institutions utilize multi-factor authentication to access their system. In JPMorgan’s case, its additional layer of security is through a one-time password. However, there was an oversight during the bank’s server upgrade, leading to the poor implementation of the access authentication scheme. Such lapse led the bank being at risk of breaches affecting over 100 million customers.

Desjardins’ Insider Breach Incident

Another high-profile data breach is the Canadian lender Desjardins Group case, among the largest financial service companies in North America. An employee gained access to confidential client information for more than a year. Poor access control system led to the unwarranted acquisition of internal data containing sensitive information of clients.

The client data of Desjardins are originally stored in data warehouses with rigorous access controls, thus limiting employee access. However, employees who have access had the malpractice of copying the data in a shared drive, leading to individuals with no access to bypass authentication measures. The data obtained includes social insurance numbers and addresses among others. As a result, 9.7 million clients were affected by the breach.

One cybersecurity scandal is enough to change the perception of clients and stakeholders in the affected financial institution. The JPMorgan Chase breach resulted in the bank’s shares falling just hours after the news of the breach broke out. Moreover, cybersecurity breaches result in legal Issues and economic costs. The Desjardins Group had to pay at most $157.31 million to settle the class-action lawsuit due to the data breach.

Recovering from a breach’s impact will take time. Thus, the saying ‘prevention is better than cure’ goes beyond an individual’s health — it also applies to financial companies’ risk management. Thus, It is a best practice to invest in solutions designed to implement tighter cybersecurity measures for your company.

Why invest in board management software for security?

Security is one of the critical factors that leads to effective governance. With the ever-increasing demand for cybersecurity compliance in the financial sector, boards can invest in the right solution to elevate digital governance. Boards must take preventive measures to avoid the repercussions of cybersecurity breaches.

A board portal is a digital tool that lets boards safeguard their information. Here’s how board portals can heighten the security governance practices of boards:

• Secure all-in-one platform
  With confidentiality in mind, board portals are a one-stop platform equipped with sophisticated features and end-to-end encryption. This keeps boards confident that sensitive board data is accessible only to those intended.
• Protected data repository
  A board portal is a secure environment where boards can store all their sensitive information, including meeting documents and private assets. It allows boards to comply with governance requirements by securely storing confidential data, granting access only to intended users.
• Traceability and accountability
  With board portals, there is a complete record of all events — past meetings, actions, references and meeting materials. There is an audit trail within board portals to track all accounts and activities for greater accountability of users.

Convene is a smart, simple, and secure board management solution designed to meet the needs of boards, senior management, and administrators. It champions smarter and streamlined board meetings as well as workflows without having to sacrifice security.

The Ideal Board Management Solution for Financial Institutions

In response to the data breaches and cyber threats that are being faced by the financial sector, the availability, control, and protection of financial data are now being prioritized by these institutions. Convene leverages the latest technology to aid companies in facing the ever-changing cybersecurity challenges. Discover Convene’s security features that help boards achieve maximum security and confidentiality on sensitive information.

User Authentication

Convene prides itself in employing a multi-layered approach to security. Regarding user authentication, it is compatible with the latest authentication methods, such as multi-factor authentication, that work best for financial companies. For instance, Convene’s use of biometric authentication methods is a workaround to prevent the risk of password leaks.

Shield Life Limited is a South African life insurance company that benefits from Convene’s security features. Convene’s top-notch security features, such as Document Encryption and Multi-Factor Authentication, added another layer of security to all their confidential documents stored in the system.

Data Centralization and Security

African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), is a supranational financial institution in Egypt. One of its struggles is the laborious and insecure file management when producing board documents and reports. With paper-based materials, data security is prone to leakage. Moreover, Shield Life Limited’s board had looked for a more secure alternative to emails when giving access to confidential board documents.

Convene provides boards with a secure location to centralize and circulate their files. With this trusted board portal, board documents, reports, and packs can be conveniently accessed in one secure space. In addition, Convene’s Document Library has enabled Afreximbank to upload new versions of documents all within the file repository — removing the need to repeat mass reprinting and distribution.

Full System Ownership

Convene gives full system ownership, granting its users total control in managing user access and permissions. This allows for the safekeeping of sensitive board materials and documents at all times. Convene allows administrators to define access controls for documents on a folder, subfolder, or individual document level. This allows intended individuals to gain access to certain levels of data.

London Metal Exchange, a Convene client, is satisfied with this feature: “With Convene, we have the ability to control people’s permissions, so by default, nobody is able to download anything unless they are an administrator within the Company Secretarial team.”

Instances, when employees left on bad terms, could cause issues since they would still have access to the system. The system ownership feature allows preserving the confidentiality of board documents by giving users the power to manage access in Convene. From London Metal Exchange’s experience, granting and disabling access is a quick and convenient process.

Cloud Hosting and On-Premise Hosting

Traveling with large amounts of printed documents can be a chore, but the risk of carrying vulnerable hard copies of confidential documents is more concerning. Convene supports flexible data hosting depending on your needs.

Financial institutions often prefer storing data on their own dedicated servers to tighten their security measures. Convene supports on-premise data hosting to empower boards to have more control over their sensitive data. With Convene, users can use their dedicated web portal running on their own servers to comply with data residency and security. Storing data in an in-house server provides full control over confidential board data, IT infrastructure, and system configuration.

Convene also offers enterprise-grade cloud hosting option. Convene has partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS), to assure that board data is protected at all times at every level. This gives hassle-free access to files by making data more portable by storing it in the cloud. Documents can be conveniently accessed anytime and anywhere.

Securing your sensitive board information with Convene

As financial institutions shift to digital, there is a rising need to digitize their boards. With this change comes cyber risks that continue to evolve over time. Even large-scale financial institutions are not spared from such risk. What boards need is a reliable solution to aid them in embracing modernity while ensuring security governance.

Convene is a multi-awarded board management software that streamlines the meeting cycle and workflow of boards. It was developed by Azeus, a CMMI Level 5 company, with end-to-end security in mind for the board’s access to sensitive information across all platforms. It is equipped with enterprise-grade security features that are designed to uphold a multi-layered approach on security. This provides its users with high levels of data protection, access control, availability, and application security.

Contact us today for a free demo and see how Convene can safeguard your data and your system.