Financial Institutions conduct critical, time-sensitive and confidential financial discussions with their colleagues and their clients on a daily basis. In order to deliver the expected service and stay competitive, text messaging has become a requirement – despite the known risks associated with SMS text and consumer based apps. These institutions are expected to address concerns for secure and safe communication of financial data and associated PII in order to continue to meet FINRA, SEC, and Dodd-Frank requirements, all while customers push for more convenience and faster service.
For those institutions that want to satisfy client demands and stay competitive, they must leverage text to conduct business. While capturing all broker/dealer and advisory communications that occur to ensure compliance requirements are met, they must also ensure communication confidentiality and prevent data leaks.
Many institutions are now mandating the move to secure encrypted messaging platforms, however they must ensure they can meet all of these strict requirements. Finding a solution however, is not always straightforward, as missteps like using non-enterprise/consumer apps have proven risky.
Secure Messaging solutions for Financial Services Institutions must deliver on several fronts.
- Comprehensive security
- Compliance
- Incident Response
Let’s discuss each and how Vaporstream can assist.
COMPREHENSIVE SECURITY
Although text messages must be encrypted in transit and at rest, true messaging security requires more. Secure messaging must go beyond the basics of encryption and disappearing text. It must provide a true enterprise-class, secure AND compliant communication platform that protects against leaks/breach while ensuring that privacy is maintained at all times. Unlike email, SMS text or many consumer based applications available today, enterprise-class secure messaging platforms should put YOU in control of your messages – the content and its use.
With data leaks and breaches on the rise, and constant reminders from the SEC that they expect the industry to do more to shore up cybersecurity, institutions should look to enable their teams to communicate with confidence. Whether sending a broadcast notification about a stock price or receiving a secondary authentication, or notification on a deal, ensuring that recipients are authenticated and that all correspondence is secure is critical. Additionally, knowing that recipients cannot forward, share, store, print, screenshot or otherwise leak information is paramount when communicating confidential information. To further protect client privacy and help arm against surveillance and device loss, dormant texts should automatically disappear from all devices based on your policies, further protecting your institution from exposure.
Named the most innovative messaging security solution by Cyber Defense Magazine in 2017, and third- party, security certified by ethical hacking specialists NowSecure, Vaporstream is trusted for its above- and-beyond approach to security and privacy. Vaporstream’s Secure Messaging Platform goes beyond encryption and empowers organizations to securely leverage the efficiencies of modern day mobile messaging while ensuring the confidentiality and protection of your sensitive information.
COMPLIANCE
Despite continual demands for innovation and client convenience for service options, financial institutions must be able to rest assured that client privacy is maintained, and that regulatory requirements are met. Any messaging solution must ensure that a single copy of text messages, confirmations etc., can be captured into a client-designated repository of record to meet the institution’s compliance and legal mandates.
Vaporstream Secure Messaging provides compliant texting, enabling a single copy of all communications to be captured in the repository of record. As the only existing copy of the text message, once in the institution’s repository (typically an email archive), normal retention policies can be applied and standard tools for supervision and eDiscovery can be utilized on the text messages to further comply to all regulatory and legal requirements.
INCIDENT RESPONSE
Secure, ephemeral (disappearing) messaging protects high level communications at every step of the way— during day‐to‐day business communications for such things as discussing wealth management advisory, stock deals and other financial services that typically involve PII. Secure messaging is also used during out‐of‐course events where emergency response plans need to go into action. In the case of an emergency, enterprise scale secure messaging provides an alternative communication channel to continue critical conversations to enable emergency notification, mitigation, response and recovery plans while continuing to serve clients’ immediate needs.
It’s important to note that in many cases the ‘bad actors’ have access to certain information within your network, or the entire network – and try to monitor behavior of the institution during crisis response. It is best to have an alternative communication channel that is outside of your network, that allows critical communications to happen freely – uncompromised – keeping the bad actors “out of the know.”
As an independent SaaS solution, Vaporstream Secure Messaging can keep communications flowing when the unexpected occurs, such as a data breach, natural disaster or other unforeseen crisis, ensuring that vital communications never cease. An institution’s ability to communicate quickly and effectively during an out of course event is critical to an organization’s recovery, preservation of brand and bottom line – as we have seen recently with global attacks such as WannaCry and Petya.
BOTTOM LINE
Financial institutions must be able to communicate and transact business – at the speed of business. Text has quickly become the communication tool of choice to feed the need for rapid response and efficiency. Financial Services institutions should review options for enterprise-scale secure messaging platforms that can deliver complete content control and compliance to meet their needs.
To find out more about how Vaporstream can help drive your objectives for client communications and cybersecurity forward contact us or schedule a demo to see Vaporstream in action.
Contributer- Kristi Perdue Hinkle