A headline from Finextra caught my attention this week – “Financial institutions have lost battle to protect customer data“. Lost the battle? As in past tense? Oh-oh!!

George Tubin, senior research director, financial information security, TowerGroup has stated in this report that it is inevitable that financial institutions will ultimately lose control of their customers data, if it hasn’t happened already. Apparently in the last year alone, Heartland Payment Systems, RBS Worldpay, Checkfree and BNY Mellon Shareowner Services have suffered massive breaches of their data protection defenses. In this age of modern software architecture and robust security measures, how is it that hackers continue to gain access where they are not welcome?

For the past 12+ years I have been working in the vault services area of the banking industry – primarily in North America, but also in other regions around the globe. The one inarguable concern of every Vault Manager that I have come into contact with is the protection of their customer’s personal data. Many a long meeting has centered on just this issue – whether is be in relation to the maintenance and support of a vault management system, service technician access for sorter support or even the simple sharing of “cleansed” information for the purposes of creating supply chain forecasts and optimization recommendations. In all this time I have never heard that these efforts – at the vault level – have been compromised. So my real question is, if our side of the house is adequately protected then why can’t the more public facing side of the business be more effective? I suspect that part of the answer lies with the question itself – because it is the public facing side of the business it attracts the attention of the of the criminal element – due to accessibility and availability.

I certainly do not know what the answer is. I only post the questions and concerns as a way to reassure my intended audience that they would appear to answering the call for effective security measures. In the light of all the other bad press and economic stress affecting banks today (at least in North America), one more media inspired challenge of this nature is not what is needed at this juncture. Yet certainly the banking public needs to be aware of the seemingly inevitable risk of one day having their personal data fall into the hands of miscreants.

Perhaps there is real advantage to joining the ranks of the unbanked? If only my mattress manufacturer offered better deposit interest rates!!