Banking Challenges Solved with Virtualization Technology | Parallels

Financial and Banking Challenges

Banking Challenges: Historically, the financial and banking sector has struggled with a dwindling pool of legacy technology systems. The sector has gotten wake-up calls from time to time in the form of cyber threats, but it’s a behemoth organization with a lot to adopt in terms of innovation and technology. Changing business models, mounting regulation and compliance pressures, and disruptive technologies have forced players in the financial and banking sector to move toward a modern IT infrastructure with the help of virtualization.

The Biggest Banking Challenges that Banks are Facing

In the financial sector, cyber-attacks are still on the rise, and fraud involving the Paycheck Protection Program is still a major problem. However, discriminating lending practices still are pervasive, and the erroneous application of new technologies is cause for concern. Below are some of the biggest banking challenges that banks are facing today:

Fraud

Using deceit to take money or other resources from a bank, financial firm, or a bank’s depositors are known as bank fraud. Credit unions and federally regulated banks are included as financial institutions for legal purposes. This comprises financial institutions that take deposits of money or other financial assets, such as Federal Reserve Banks, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), mortgage lending organizations, and other institutions.

Changing Business Models

Financial institutions are being forced to alter their business practices due to several issues facing the banking industry, including the expense of compliance management. Traditional sources of banks’ performance are under pressure from the rising cost of capital, continued low interest rates, declining return on equity, and declining proprietary trading. Shareholder expectations are unaffected by this.

Outdated Applications

According to the 2017 Gartner CIO Study, more than 50% of financial services CIOs think digital efforts will increase revenue and value and that a larger proportion of business will flow through digital channels.

However, organizations utilizing outdated business management software or siloed systems won’t be able to stay up with this world that is becoming increasingly digital. Without a strong, futuristic, technical base, organizations would miss important business progress.

Regulation and Compliance

After Rohit Chopra, head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau warned the banking sector that the impact of the possible abuse of artificial intelligence and algorithms in lending choices is still being closely examined.

The CFPB is being more cautious and applying the brakes, but banks and fintech see the chance to employ AI and machine-learning capabilities to expand credit to more customers.

Cyber Security and Security Challenges

While more systems and users become exposed to cybersecurity risks, and over 85% of banking executives throughout asset sizes indicate a rise in digital use at their institution, these issues are becoming more prevalent. Indeed, with 26% of the vote, cybersecurity dangers came in first place this year.

The danger is obvious: criminals are growing more skilled, and the risk increases as more people conduct business online. Additionally, consumers have heard so much about cybercrime over the years that each new incidence resonates with them a bit less than the previous.

How Virtualization Helps with Security Challenges

banking challenges The use of virtualization technology can help address some security challenges faced by banks.

For one, workstation sharing, common among bank employees on shift work, can be problematic if an employee fails to observe security practices and risks exposing a colleague to a potential breach. When user personalization is not required, as in this case, best practice dictates that employees be assigned virtual desktops rather than traditional PCs.

Virtual desktops are also secure from theft since they reside within the data center. If you allow users to make temporary changes to virtual desktops, they can be set to return to their standard secure configurations at regular intervals. They can also be updated and patched remotely from the data center.

Finally, virtual applications are more secure since their usage can be tracked and monitored from the data center. They also perform better since they have less bandwidth requirements than traditional desktop applications. This boost in security can help mitigate many of the aforementioned banking challenges.

Banking Challenges vs. Virtualization

Amidst the rising demand for round-the-clock personalized consumer services, the Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) sector has adopted virtualization solutions to achieve easy and fast application delivery. This transition from legacy systems to a more innovative centralized has only recently been possible with the evolution of a few high-end virtualization solutions.

For BFSI companies, it is essential to ensure company-wide compliance with the latest security requirements. The best way to easily achieve this is to opt for centrally managed application delivery. With a virtualization solution in place, BFSI companies can offer their employees immediate mobile access to business-critical apps, desktops, and data—with a native-like experience—regardless of their geographic location. This helps with business continuity. Virtualization makes infrastructure administration easier, as all the compute resources can be monitored and managed from a single dashboard.

Another benefit of BFSI companies implementing virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is its ability to transform old legacy systems into thin client–like machines with modern operating systems and updated security features. This cuts down the otherwise frequent hardware replacement costs for thousands of employees. Last but not least, the capabilities of virtualization—such as easy deployment and scalability—are quite compelling features for BFSI companies.

Overcoming Banking Challenges with Parallels RAS

Parallels® Remote Application Server (RAS) is an industry-leading, all-in-one, easy-to-deploy VDI solution that offers both application and desktop delivery under a single license. It requires minimal effort while offering quick provisioning and auto-scaling of resources. Some of the Parallels RAS key benefits include:

Supports all major hypervisors and has built-in load balancing capabilities.
Reduces the risk of data loss and malicious activity by utilizing policies to limit access based on user, group permissions, locations, and devices.
Integrates Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), FIPS 140-2 encryption, and multi-factor authentication (MFA).
Provides a unified and intuitive management console, configuration wizards, and a customizable set of tools that can be used to configure remote desktops and VDI easily.
Ensures a native-like experience while accessing centralized applications delivered on iOS and Android end-user devices.

For institutions spread across various geographic locations, IT network operators can connect all the separate Parallels RAS sites under one farm and manage them from a central console. This is an ideal multi-tenancy support feature for global BFSI organizations.

Download the 30-day trial of Parallels RAS solution and improve your IT infrastructure to help deal with all those banking challenges!

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