Concourse Labs, the leader in automated cloud governance, risk management and security, released its Financial Services governance solution, providing banks and other financial services firms with the complete set of out-of-the-box policies and automation required for governance, security and compliance as they digitize and adopt cloud computing technologies. Concourse provides a complete set of cloud policies and controls, enabling financial service institutions to understand and manage their risk, protect their assets and data, and prove they are effectively managing their compliance responsibilities. 

The financial services sector has been one of the industries most heavily impacted by the global COVID-19 pandemic. The shocks of the pandemic are driving banks and other financial services firms to accelerate their use of cloud services to deliver digital experiences to customers, to support their workforce, and to drive cost efficiencies.

A recent IDC report highlights that “by 2029, a best-in-class bank will be supported by a hybrid architecture consisting of cloud-based infrastructure and services to create existing and new sources of value for customers.” To meet the demands of the future, financial services firms are working to develop digital transformation strategies with cloud as the foundational underpinning. IDC also reported that “89% of banks reported operating with or planning to operate with hybrid cloud strategies”.[1]

However, regulatory, privacy and compliance challenges associated with the large amount of sensitive financial customer information continue to hinder the pace of change needed for innovation. As one of the most heavily regulated sectors, security, risk and compliance, ecosystem management, integration, and the lack control plane architectures remain the key barriers to success in advancing public cloud maturation in financial services.

Concourse provides a complete cloud compliance solution for financial services firms, including pre-written policies developed by Concourse’s banking and financial services cloud experts and policies implementing industry standards such as the Cloud Security Alliance Cloud Controls Matrix and the National Institute of Standards. Furthermore, these policies can be customized to meet the specific needs of each part of the firm, reflecting different policy requirements for diverse business units, geographies and customer types.

Concourse’s policies have been developed by a team of experts who successfully led the move to cloud at major firms, operating and advising large scale cloud adoption for over a decade. This expertise is reflected in Concourse’s curated policies and its SaaS platform capabilities.

Concourse’s SaaS-based solution is comprehensive, making it easy for a firm to understand and manage the five critical factors necessary to maintain compliance and security while using cloud computing:

• Organizational Identities and Responsibilities, specifying who can define cloud policies and rules over specific jurisdictions and scopes.
• Application and Dataset Identities, discovering and assigning responsibility for every asset deployed into cloud.
• Risk Posture, specifying the appropriate level of risk for every asset and organizational group.
• Policies and Rules, defining what configurations, behaviors and activities are appropriate for every cloud asset and organization in the firm.
• Assessment, Attestation and Evidencing of Compliance, enabling firms to prove their state of compliance in cloud at every point in time.

Concourse has done the hard work of defining policies and controls, and creating the automation applying them to all a firm’s cloud usage. Firms gain immediate benefit, reduced risk and lower costs than attempting to create this themselves.

As a SaaS solution, Concourse is fast to deploy. Customers typically began seeing their first cloud compliance reports within the first day after deployment, allowing them to understand their current risk posture and build a remediation plan. Concourse can be deployed incrementally, resulting in faster results, greater success and lower cost. As a multi-cloud solution, it protects customers across a wide range of cloud platforms, including Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.

“The financial services industry is going through an exciting period of technology innovation that is creating incredible opportunity, but which also presents an existential source of risk,” said Don Duet, Concourse Labs CEO. “In my 28-year tenure at Goldman Sachs, as both head of the global technology division and as Chief Information Officer, Ihad the opportunity to take a firm focused on traditional capital markets, and using the cloud, transformed them by moving further into consumer markets to see digital modernization and capture additional market share. Throughout the course of our multi-year digital transformation journey, our priority wasmigrating to public cloud safely and securely while navigating a unique set of regulatory and cybersecurity challenges.”

Donalso stated that “the Concourse Labs team collectively has 50+ years of hands-on experience building, operating, and advising large-scale highly regulated public cloud initiatives, and we recognize and understand the distinct concerns firms have around risk management as it relates to cloud. We are committed to delivering the expertise and solutions necessary to enable clients in the financial services industry to achieve their digital transformation goals.”

The bar to meet customer expectations within the financial services industry has continued to rise, and cloud has become the underpinning for the digital innovation needed to satisfy the new normal for customer experience. With this launch, Concourse provides financial institutions with a complete out-of-the-box solution to comply with regulators’ requirements for cloud security, risk management, and governance. Concourse gives you the necessary policies and controls, visibility into cloud usage, and automation of cloud compliance functions.