Regional Banks Are Under Attack: Reduce Manual Processes Now
Regional banks face increasingly sophisticated data security threats, which is why they need to leverage automated DevOps tools for Salesforce to reduce their attack surface.
Why It Matters: Banks of all sizes handle their customers’ most sensitive data. Exposures or corruptions of this data through cyberattack or a simple internal error can lead to compliance failures, loss of consumer trust, and massive amounts of lost revenue.
- According to Palo Alto Networks, financial organizations are “300 times more likely than other companies to be targeted by cyberattacks, and the costs of those attacks are higher than for any other sector.”
- Accidental deletions, data handling errors, and faulty applications can corrupt system data and introduce security vulnerabilities to live environments.
Here are six ways regional banks can use DevOps tools for Salesforce to protect themselves:
- Automate Code Reviews
- Streamline Deployment Processes
- Maintain Current Backups
- Improve Data Management
- Reinforce User Validation Measures
- Prioritize Continuous Learning
1. Automate Code Reviews
Coding errors introduce bugs in live environments that can create openings for cybercriminals to gain access to your environment. And for regional banks, this compromised security can be catastrophic.
Automated code reviews with static code analysis tools ensures nothing slips between the cracks and makes it to a live environment.
Manual code reviews are incredibly time-consuming and prone to errors. Utilizing an automated tool for this ensures the last line of code gets the same level of attention as the first.
2. Streamline Deployment Processes
Once the code is written, it needs to be packaged, tested, and deployed. These processes can be automated with a series of continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) tools.
Automated Salesforce DevOps tools can be leveraged to speed the code review process with auto-approval for preset quality gates and auto-merge capabilities.
These and other functionalities enable regional banks to match the productivity of larger financial institutions.
3. Maintain Current Backups
One aspect of a complete data security strategy is to prepare for outages. Even the most secure environments are still vulnerable to losing connectivity—there are simply too many scenarios to guard against all of them.
Schedule repeated and automated backups of your Salesforce environment to remain compliant while also giving your recovery team a recent data snapshot to restore your platform.
Configure these backups to include metadata, sensitive data, and functional information.
4. Improve Data Management
The data within your Salesforce environment can also be used to improve processes. Many Salesforce DevOps tools offer dashboards and reports to harness these insights to identify areas for improvement.
All types of system data need to be categorized and cleansed to ensure your information remains up-to-date and useful.
Check out this blog to learn eight best practices for optimizing your Salesforce data governance strategy.
5. Reinforce User Validation Measures
The people who access your data can either help or hurt it. It’s in your best interest to have strict control over access points to guarantee that users logging into your system have proper permission to be there.
Implement two-factor authentication and enforce strict password policies to drastically increase the security of your platform.
Adhering to best practices like password length and performing frequent updates strengthens user authentication efforts.
6. Prioritize Continuous Learning
Regional banks need to get the most from their team members. Having a small team doesn’t need to hold back your capacity for release frequency, quality of updates, and data security.
Providing continuous training and expanding available tools not only gives team members what they need to provide the results you expect, but it also keeps them engaged and creates a more enjoyable working experience.
A culture focused on improvement will continue to grow and evolve to streamline Salesforce DevOps processes.
Next Step…
Banks of all sizes need to ensure the updates and applications they introduce are free of errors. The most obvious reason for this is that an error-free update will function as intended. But potentially even more importantly, an absence of errors means it will be more secure.
Read our ebook, Preventing Salesforce Security Risks Through Code Quality, to learn more about why this is so important and what you can do to guarantee clean code.
FAQs
Why are banks so highly targeted by cybercriminals?
Banks handle their customers’ most sensitive information, such as personal identifiable information (PII) and financial data. And depending on the size of the bank, they might store millions of records of these types of highly sensitive information. This data is incredibly lucrative on the black market because it gets high prices for cybercriminals involved in identity theft, fraud, and ransomware attacks. Banks also often have complex and interconnected systems that can be challenging to completely secure. Despite significant investments in cybersecurity, the financial sector remains attractive due to the potential for large-scale financial gain and the systemic impact of successful attacks, which can disrupt economic stability and erode public trust in financial institutions.
Which Salesforce DevOps tools will most help regional banks?
Regional banks are likely working with a modest-sized development team. Automated tools help expand the potential productivity of these teams without sacrificing quality or security. Static code analysis is a critical tool to expedite the production of high-quality code. From there, CI/CD tools expedite testing and integration of massive amounts of coding updates. Using version control is also necessary to streamline collaboration between teams. Altogether, a complete DevSecOps platform will provide the support needed to maintain a secure and productive application life cycle, no matter the size of your development team.
What risks besides cybercrime do banks need to consider?
Banks need to be aware of internal risks and protect against them just as vigorously as external threats from cybercriminals. While people tend to watch for malicious attacks, such as employees stealing information, something as innocuous as an accidental deletion can lead to data exposure. Overexposed data has a much higher possibility of being negatively impacted by a costly mistake. This occurs when too many people have access to data. And for banks, these mistakes can have incredibly damaging consequences. It’s critical to ensure that only the people who need access to perform their duties are able to view, edit, and delete sensitive information. Strong authentication measures must also be maintained.
