Data Auditing Blog

Data Auditing in Regional Banks – A Humbling Moment

Occasionally as I survey first-hand the experiences of enterprises dealing with compliance and risk management issues, there is a “wait a minute” moment. A humbling moment if you will. Most recently, this humbling moment happened as two regional banking customers of Mantra were sharing their experiences. Regional banks as I learnt, are in an interesting place and have unique challenges.

First, they are small – particularly in comparison with the huge financial services companies. Their operating IT teams are small. Their security resources are miniscule. Their application teams are daily firefighters used to manning multiple fronts.

However, unlike other smaller enterprises, the compliance and regulation pressure in a regional bank is intense. A regional bank has all the usual regulations of a large financial services company – as well the hand of FDIC is omnipresent.

As it turns out this unique combination can challenge the best of them and often brings out the best in them. The questions I was interested in understanding from these banks were – 

1. How do regional banks deal with compliance & risk management problems like data auditing? How do they approach the problem? 

2. What are their top drivers?

3. Who leads these initiatives? What are the people, process, and technology issues? Does the security person drive, or does the application owner?

4. What role does technology have to play in this? What are the critical technology challenges in this environment?

The answers to these questions are interesting. In summary: 

 

• Compliance clearly seems like the top driver, though viewed through risk management lens.
• SOX, Privacy, and FDIC-led audits seem to be top drivers.
•  People driving initiatives seem to be all over the map when it comes to roles – the only common characteristic is that they are usually entrepreneurial leaders, who have a strong combination of hands-on operations and strategic thinking. 
•  Technology has a huge role to play – almost an essential requirement since resources are tight. Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) seemed to be the leading requirement of technology – not just automation, but ease of use and reliability across the whole life cycle of deployment, management and integration. For regional banks, technology becomes an essential operational tool for viewing business risk. There is no room for error or overhead.

For first-hand perspectives from a regional bank, check out the webcast we did recently  – Regional Bank Recorded Webinar: Auditing & Protection Databases in Regional Banks - An Industry View