In a post-COVID landscape, remote working is more accepted — even in banking and financial services. Expensive city offices may well become a thing of the past, and it is unlikely that every worker who once filled our capitals’ towers will return.
Remote working brings a vast array of benefits, from cutting costs to increasing productivity. However, the sensitive nature of the finance industry’s data poses a serious challenge.
Secure authentication comes first
The key to successful, more permanent remote working is secure authentication, starting with a passwordless approach. Technologies such as biometrics help keep data safe as cybercrime and online fraud escalate. Passwords and PINs also put pressure on IT helpdesks, costing money in resets and hurting productivity. Increasingly, businesses are adopting multi-factor biometric authentication to enable secure remote working while delivering a streamlined user experience.
This landscape is going to favour the agile — the disruptors bringing necessary change to sectors like financial services.
Banks are already partnering with fintech firms to provide more responsive lending. Uniting with nimble technology partners will be key for large financial firms to enable a remote workforce and succeed.
Securing the unseen worker
With teleworking staff and their devices now outside the corporate perimeter, endpoints such as laptops and mobile devices need a renewed focus. The most secure options for internal access are virtual desktop-server technology or virtual private networks.
- Provide corporate-owned, managed devices with malware protection, vulnerability detection, patching and local firewalls.
- Make internal applications available to remote workers so they do not rely on uncontrolled equipment or software.
- Ensure adequate VPN bandwidth and licences for the whole workforce, not just a handful of users.
- Deploy cyber education, patching and cyber-hygiene programmes for all employees.
- Set business rules and limits around every process, with supervisory sign-off from compliance where rules are not met.
Managing rising risk
Fraud historically increases during disaster-related events. Phishing is the leading attack vector against banks, and attempts on customers and employees rose sharply during the pandemic. At the same time, the tools that distinguish “normal” employee behaviour from bad actors are less effective when everyone is logging in from new devices, at new hours.
Institutions that had already implemented multi-factor authentication for employee access have an advantage — and those that had not have moved it to the top of their list.
A new approach to managing
Metrics-based management
Measuring productivity on results requires quantifiable metrics. Being connected to a VPN does not mean someone is working — nor that they are not. Where responsibilities vary, metrics need to be defined per role and revised regularly, and set at a realistic level.
Data-driven management
Employees should be measured on the entirety of their work across corporate, local and internet-based applications, email and chat. Comparing individuals with peer groups surfaces best practice and highlights where extra training is needed — and measurement should be proactive, not reactive.
Watch for disengagement
- Decreased productivity
- Social withdrawal
- Attendance problems
- Negativity
- Lack of initiative to improve
Our remote work force services bundle
Sterling supports financial institutions with the legal, regulatory and operational side of moving to secure remote working — from policy and compliance frameworks to vendor contracts, data protection and employment considerations.