In an increasingly interconnected digital landscape, the security of data has become paramount for banking leaders. The frequency and sophistication of cyberattacks have evolved, rendering traditional perimeter security measures insufficient. In this environment, the need to protect data at its source has never been more critical. PKWARE’s unique approach to data security-centered on finding and fixing data across all environments-offers purpose-built solutions for banking and finance companies a robust solution to safeguard their sensitive PII data.
This white paper explores the strategic imperatives of data security for today’s banking and finance leaders. We will explore the limitations of traditional perimeter security, the critical need for comprehensive data protection posture, and how PKWARE enables organizations to accurately discover, classify, and protect data across structured, semi-structured, and unstructured environments with minimal user impact.
Why the Perimeter Stopped Being Enough
Perimeter security is still necessary and it is no longer sufficient. Cloud services, mobile devices, and remote work have dissolved the traditional network boundary, and attackers have become practised at getting past what remains of it. Once that happens, whether the data is safe depends entirely on whether the data itself was protected.
Banks and financial institutions make this harder by the nature of their estates. Data is generated and stored across endpoints such as SharePoint, OneDrive, and Microsoft 365, and across hybrid clouds and mainframes. A single breach carries loss of trust, damage to brand, regulatory penalties, and direct financial loss.
Think Differently, Then Act Differently
The principle underneath PKWARE’s approach is that you cannot protect what you cannot find. PK Protect locates and protects sensitive data wherever it sits, on endpoints, in the cloud, or inside legacy systems including mainframes. The point is not to keep the perimeter intact indefinitely. It is that when the perimeter is breached, the data behind it stays secure.
Acting on that means automated discovery that classifies data and applies protection to it, whether encryption, redaction, or masking, according to policy. Discovery on its own produces a report. Discovery with remediation produces a result, and it covers structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data with minimal impact on the people using it.
What Inaction Has Cost
The paper carries three cases. A global financial institution suffered a breach through unprotected data in a cloud environment. Customer information was exposed, trust was lost, the stock fell 20 percent, and regulatory fines exceeded 100 million dollars.
A large company was breached through unprotected credit card information held in a legacy system. It lost more than 200 million dollars in revenue, customer loyalty dropped 30 percent, and multiple lawsuits followed. In both cases the approach to data security had been reactive.
The third is the other kind. Western Union used PK Protect to automate discovery and detection, creating data tags, scanning priority systems, and identifying PII. That work is being broadened across the wider data landscape, with masking and encryption among the capabilities being taken up next.