Data Governance and Security in Banking with FPT IS, Axway, Quest, and Thales

On October 4, FPT IS, in collaboration with DT Asia and Hung Phat Investment and Development Joint Stock Company (HPID), held the workshop themed “Data Integration, Governance, and Security in Banking”. The event aims to introduce solutions for secure data protection, and data integration and governance platforms tailored for banking and finance. At the event, experts from Thales, Quest, Axway, and FPT IS raised and dissected challenges present to data security, and how to leverage AI for analysis of data – enterprises’ valuable resource. 52 representatives from banks and finance companies attended the workshop. 

The workshop was attended by representatives of FPT IS, Mr. Tran Thanh Hung, Business Director of the Finance & Banking Sector, and Mr. Nguyen Trong Cong, Deputy Director of Consulting & Integrated Solutions Center; representatives of DT Asia, Mr. Cheong Weng Seng, Senior Sales Director at Axway, and Mr. Vikas Raina, Data Intelligence Sr Solution Strategist at Quest; and representatives of Thales, Mr. Tang Thanh Phong, Deputy Director of HPID, and Mr. Phan Ngoc Bao, Business Director of HPID.

The increasing diversification and expansion of digital banking are opening up numerous opportunities for business growth while making user data vulnerable to attacks and fraud. The Vietnamese Government’s Decree 13/2023/ND-CP imposes more stringent regulations on personal information protection during data digitization and processing, especially in banking and finance. This has created a strong legal framework for personal data protection, setting high standards for enterprises in the industry regarding the collection, storage and processing of information. The workshop’s main topic thus focused on effective and transparent data security and governance.

In his speech at the opening ceremony, Mr. Tran Thanh Hung, Business Director of the Finance & Banking Sector at FPT IS, said that, in the past 3 years, the protection of personal data in the banking and finance sector has become an urgent issue and drawn special attention from the Vietnamese Government. To comply with data security regulations, a large number of banks have enhanced the protection of customer information by leveraging biometric authentication systems and user verification techniques. The application of advanced security solutions and data governance methods to businesses’ operation models is no longer optional but mandatory for their growth. However, making these solutions work and fit companies’ actual situation requires a lot of time and continuous effort. “With decades of experience in implementing diverse solutions for the banking industry, we hope that our sharing about data governance and security in banking at today’s workshop will be useful and informative.” Mr. Hung emphasized.

Mr. Tran Thanh Hung, Business Director of the Finance & Banking Sector at FPT IS

The first solution introduced at the workshop was Thales’ CipherTrust Data Security Platform (CDSP), presented by Mr. Tang Thanh Phong, Deputy Director of HPID. CDSP is a powerful tool that enables enterprises to discover, classify, protect, and control sensitive data in any environment, including cloud, virtualization, big data, or other physical environments. It eliminates the complexity, bulkiness, and inconsistency typically faced by data security solutions while accelerating the desired implementation, meeting compliance requirements, and strengthening security as companies transition to the cloud. This allows companies to save resources for data security and compliance controls, and significantly minimize potential risks.

Mr. Tang Thanh Phong, Deputy Director of HPID

To “Elevate the Data Governance and AI Initiatives in Organizations”, Mr. Vikas Raina, Data Intelligence Sr Solution Strategist at Quest, introduced the erwin Data Intelligence solution. erwin offers an approach to data intelligence and next-generation data modeling in AI Banking applications that ensures accurate compliance from data model to data marketplace. This solution automatically harvests metadata from across your data landscape and data models into a central data catalog, and makes governed assets easy to access and understand in a consumer-friendly data marketplace and discovery experience for all users. These features perfectly fit the business environment and daily transactions in finance where diverse customers have different needs and require a large range of services. In particular, data mining facilitates banks not only to win new accounts, but also to retain their current customers. If bank employees fail to provide their customers with the trustworthiness of the data, they will likely switch to other banks. Erwin Data Intelligence is the key to helping you discover, govern, score and share high-value, trusted data across your enterprise. 

Mr. Vikas Raina, Data Intelligence Sr Solution Strategist at Quest, introduced the erwin Data Intelligence solution

While banks are boosting data connection with third-party partners via Open API, huge challenges are facing their multiple partner management and data security assurance in the Open Banking environment. Shifting from previously closed systems, i.e. no sharing and no linking to customer databases for data protection, banks are now changing to become as open as possible. At the workshop, Mr. Cheong Weng Seng, Senior Sales Director at Axway, introduced the Amplify API Management solution that offers secure, efficient API lifecycle management from design to implementation. The API Management Platform helps speed innovation between internal and external teams, and reach new markets and customers. The implementation of Open API requires heavy investment in technology infrastructure and human resources. As a result, a well-fitted, lightweight Open API solution that meets high legality standards and offers hassle-free access to diverse API data will attract great interest from banks. Following this trend, Axway’s Amplify API Management enables its partners to discover, observe, and subscribe without interfering with existing data flows, accelerating the delivery of banking services that meet increasingly demanding customer standards.  

Mr. Cheong Weng Seng, Senior Sales Director at Axway

The highlight of the workshop was the panel discussion on “Data Management Optimization and Effective Security in Banking” moderated by Mr. Nguyen Trong Cong, Deputy Director of Consulting & Integrated Solutions Center at FPT IS.  Experts jointly “dissected” the data security challenges during digital transformation and introduced banks to suitable coping methods. In the era of AI, data quality, data visibility, and data management are becoming of great importance while lack of data literacy or quality data management training are challenging enterprises. Addressing this issue, Mr. Vikas Raina expressed: “Data Management is always the basic foundation for all AI needs. erwin offers data management capabilities revolving around AI models, making them understandable within your enterprises. Specifically, we ensure compliance with three key attributes during data product design: Accessibility, Ownership, and Business Value.” The most concerned issue at the discussion session was customer data protection compliance, especially how Decree 13 on personal data protection in Vietnam supports compliance in the above-mentioned solutions. “Enterprises need to accurately identify the components of personal data in order to meet the requirements for personal data protection imposed by Decree 13. Many of them, however, run into difficulties determining what is considered personal data. To address this issue, we offer DDC, a solution in the CDSP suite, designed to assist banks in discovering and classifying the types of data that need to be protected.” said Mr. Phong. API-fueled banking operations are being progressively made popular in Vietnam. “Open Banking API is gradually becoming a level playing field for banks and non-banking institutions, while encouraging more participation and competition in the payment sector.” Mr. Cheong Weng Seng commented on the Open Banking API trend in the discussion session. 

The workshop ended with a Q&A session where experts from FPT IS, Axway, Quest and HPDI responded to queries from bank representatives. The concerns raised not only showed enterprises’ interest in the topics discussed at the workshop but also made the event a useful information sharing session in the context of data management and protection against complex cyber-attacks today. This would also strongly drive companies’ digital transformation, particularly in banking and finance.