DEMONSTRATING CONTROL OVER THE ENTIRE DATA ESTATE
R&C: How would you characterise the rising importance of data to financial institutions (FIs) in general, and to their compliance professionals in particular?
Cole: Data is where your risk sits. If you are going to get breached, it is likely the perpetrator is going after your data. Historically, the focus of compliance has been on data from transactional systems and elements that are seen to be flowing in and out of the organisation. This is understandable, because it is where the regulator’s focus was placed to try and prevent fraud when it comes to financial transactions. Increasingly, though, from a regulatory perspective, financial services firms must take a more holistic view of their data world – not just their transactional systems but all of the data they own. The realisation, certainly from a compliance perspective, is there are terabytes of data they have never set eyes on. Some banks have been shocked by what we have uncovered in their datasets – credit card numbers, names, email addresses and so on, stored in spreadsheets, buried in folders, in multiple places, without any oversight. The scary thing is it was that bad 15 years ago, and it really has not improved much since then.
Apr-Jun 2021 Issue
Automated Intelligence