Digital Resilience is key to retaining customer trust in Financial Services

By Ian Waters, Senior Director, EMEA, Cisco ThousandEyes

In many ways, the financial services sector is a pioneer when it comes to adopting and advancing innovations that help meet the demands of a customer base that’s ever-increasingly in want of digitised forms of engagement. As customers’ expectations of online services increase, financial service companies are undergoing digital transformation shifts that increase their reliance on unowned infrastructure and environments.

These exponential levels of complexity mean IT and networking teams now face the challenge of providing exceptional digital experiences across entire enterprise, internet, and cloud networks.

For an industry that fundamentally relies on customer trust, what does it mean for FS companies to mitigate the risk of outages and other disruptions in external environments that are outside their purview yet intrinsic to their ability to deliver always-on digital access to their customers?

Bridging the visibility gap to mitigate outages

In today’s hyper-distributed world, the internet has become the delivery mechanism for mission-critical customer and employee applications, services, and websites. The always-on experience we as users have come to expect from modern applications is only made possible by a complex ecosystem of connections, platforms, APIs, and integrations, all functioning together. Not only are there blind spots tied to relying on third-party providers like cloud service providers (CSPs) and Internet service providers (ISPs), but also to the interdependencies that make up the backbone of FS companies’ applications, SaaS use and cloud-hosted services.

Without the ability to assure user experiences across these external environments, organisations risk costly downtime that ultimately impacts reputational damage and even the bottom line. Whether it is online banking, stock trading, or payment processing, every minute of downtime puts brand perception and loyalty at risk and ultimately risks eroding customer trust.

FS companies know that digital modernisation is no longer a differentiator—it is table stakes. In today’s digital landscape, achieving business outcomes is dependent on the ability to deliver consistently stellar digital experiences to every user, everywhere, every time.

The question of managing the impact of disruptions in third-party network infrastructure isn’t one that’s solely based on FS companies’ desire to meet customer demand and deliver exceptional digital experiences. With the upcoming deadline of the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), it is also one of meeting new regulatory standards.

Ensuring digital resilience

Set to take effect in January 2025, the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), “aims at strengthening the IT security of financial entities such as banks, insurance companies and investment firms and making sure that the financial sector in Europe is able to stay resilient in the event of a severe operational disruption.”

Beyond financial services companies, DORA expands the scope of regulations to other, newer stakeholders in the sector, such as crowd-funding providers and crypto-asset service providers. It also sets out expectations on organisations in terms of management, testing, and reporting of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) issues. However, what’s interesting about DORA is its focus on ICT third-party service providers.

Cloud service providers and other ICT third-party service providers are included in the act, along with an expectation that IT teams within those financial institutions satisfy themselves of a third party’s resilience, especially where they support the delivery of an important business service.

For instance, DORA mandates organisations conduct a mapping exercise to identify these important business services and their dependencies, both internal and external. As a result, this expanding set of providers must now be part of the planning, testing, management, and reporting process, which will require close interaction and joint efforts between FS companies and their ICT third-party service providers. To achieve adherence, new approaches to digital assurance and third-party visibility are required.

All roads lead to digital resilience

The same network technologies that help FS companies control end-to-end digital experiences with end-to-end visibility across their distributed digital services now serve a DORA purpose, too. Efforts to assure digital experience across unowned environments not only drive the bottom line but also help achieve DORA compliance.

By proactively addressing network disruptions and suitably preparing for DORA, financial services institutions can achieve digital resilience, secure their digital future, and reassure customers that their financial well-being remains a top priority. After all, trust is what matters most.