A Bank Masked 130 Servers through Data Masking
To ensure the highest form of protection of their 'Customer Sensitive Information'.
About the Bank
The bank provides banking and asset management services in California and surrounding cities in the United States. The uniqueness and easy interest rates for asset holding made the bank popular within a few years. Currently, the bank comes under the list of top 20 banks in the United States. Overall, the bank is holding more than USD 40 billion worth of assets from its customers. When it comes to securing assets with the help of traditional secure measures there are no other institutions other than this bank.
Situation of the Bank
Over time, the bank increased its security measures to save its customers' assets. The threat of security on the bank, for its asset management options, has increased. The bank always incorporated higher security standards in protecting the CSI (Customer Sensitive Information). The corporate partners of the bank mandated the use of data masking to protect the CSI. Hence, the bank was looking for a partner that could provide smooth and secure data masking services. AskDataEntry made its chance there and grabbed the deal by showing its past data masking work.
Importance of Data Masking for Banking Operations
At present, data is everything, it is the asset and also the threat. Banking institutions are on the threat radar and consistently meet security threats. Besides applying several data-protecting measurements, data masking outshines all. Data masking is a more sophisticated way to hide data in the digital medium to ensure its protection. With the help of data masking, banks can add more layers of protection to their sensitive information. As per federal laws, data masking is also very relevant and mandatory for all banks to perform.
Protecting CSI is very important for banks in the present time because the chances of data theft are gradually increasing. Data masking as a process to protect the data has emerged over time that helps banks to show their data without exposing it. Professional data masking experts generally hide the original letter through modification of numbers or letters. In other words, they will replace the original sensitive data with a copy fake version for the security of CSI. Banking institutions nowadays hire outsourcing experts to perform data masking operations. Outsourcing experts maintain all the rules and regulations of data masking operations to perform the tasks.
Challenges Faced by the Bank
After our initial inspection, we found the bank was facing many challenges from different angles regarding the data masking project. Data masking is not a core task of the bank and therefore it decided to take external help for that. The bank approached AskDataEbntry to develop an approach to mask CSI data. We assisted and also found out the major challenges the bank was facing at that time.
Several strategic projects were in operation from the bank's side at the time when masking of their data became necessary. Added to this, all the resources from the bank's side were also involved in those strategic projects. Therefore, a void was in place when the masking of data became very relevant for the banking data and operations overall. With the help of outsourcing, the bank wanted to fill the gap in resources and ensure the complete protection of CSI.
The resources were involved in other projects as they were set on priority. The heaviness of other development projects made the issues of data masking down. Shifting all focus to the data masking project was tough at that time. They were not focused yet to follow all steps to implement a data entry system at that moment.
The bank, at that time, was going through an integration process when the requirement for data masking appeared. The integration process was intense and it took all the resources from the company. The management team was also involved in the integration process so the data masting project took a back seat.
Hiring experts for the data masking project in in-house operation was impossible due to a lack of funds. Data masking is a non-core banking process as the bank did not gain any monetary benefits from it. Therefore, the core management team restricted the budget for the data masking project and preferred it to be done via outsourcing.
Tailored Solutions from AskDataEntry
AskDataEntry delivered its best data masking solutions to the bank with all appropriate measures. The team did not interrupt regular banking activities while performing its data masking work. We delivered the data masking work in the most secure way that the bank could ever have in this process.
We started off the project by performing a security check at the basic level. We did it because the project was all about working with sensitive financial data. The bank previously faced some issues regarding data security so we had to prioritize the security aspect first. After checking the requirements and sensitivity, we framed a detailed plan for data masking execution.
After the requirement assessment, we initiated the data transmission process. We planned to take out data from the bank's server to our testing environment. Hence, we moved following our plan and took out datasets in a few branches for our masking tests. We handled the task with our data monitoring services smoothly.
We initiated the process by performing a basic quality check before the masking work. We did it to ensure CSI was captured properly and it remained consistent throughout the process. With the application of robust and cutting-edge tools, we masked all the datasets excellently. For this project, we masked data for more than 130 client servers and host applications.
Deploying the QA (Quality Analyst) team for the project was necessary because of its sensitivity. The client did not want to keep any loophole in the process that could pose any threat in the future. We deployed our subject matter experts for the QA implementation process to ensure the maintenance of proper quality. The QA team also rectified mistakes that the team had made and organized the datasets in order.
For this project, we divided the entire project into different parts as we cannot interrupt the banking operation. Therefore wherever we performed the masking work in batches and fulfilled the client's needs. We always try to create minimal disturbance while we perform the making task. We delivered the project within a fixed timeframe without creating any mistakes.
K. Malice
(Sr. Manager)
AskDataEntry maintained the security level at a higher level and that satisfied us the most. The team performed really well as they all were knowledgeable and passionate about what they did.
