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Feature: Keeping your company data safe and sound

by: Mortgage Solutions
  • 06/09/2010
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Feature: Keeping your company data safe and sound
Paul Duckworth, director of technology firm the Charlbury Group says getting your workflow systems right and keeping the business secure should never be matters for compromise

Over recent months we’ve been asked to conduct reviews of various clients’ IT security and business protocols. This is a tremendous exercise for any company to undertake and irrespective of a firms’ size it is crucial to regularly review security protocols to ensure that the latest knowledge is being applied and the latest developments utilised.

This is certainly a crucial exercise for larger firms with in-house IT teams but I would also encourage smaller brokerages and individuals to carry out the exercise to review the systems and procedures that they are using to run their businesses.

This may be just putting some time aside to look at your client workflow systems and interrogate the security of your client data. This is definitely good practice and will enable early identification of any areas of weakness that need to be addressed or more likely enhanced. New technologies are constantly being developed to make business processes more effective or add crucial layers of security to protect your business data. Very often cost is a restricting factor and so a review is also a good exercise that can help you decide, which possible investments are ‘must haves’ as opposed to ‘like to haves’.

There is little doubt that data security has certainly become a hot topic over recent years with some startling lapses in the financial services industry in particular hitting the headlines. With clients’ financial details being held by financial firms it’s easy to see why our sector is perhaps under greater scrutiny that many others. Many lapses that have been exposed highlight errors in procedure rather than security breaches and the good news is that these can often be rectified simply and without too much cost.

The main reason that firms seek an external perspective is that much like reviewing something that you’ve written yourself – it is simply more difficult to be objective. Having a fresh set of eyes to objectively evaluate policies and procedures that have been in place for some time is often a valuable exercise. That is not to say that there will inevitably be a raft of terrifying and hugely costly errors to be rectified but more that peace of mind can be achieved and savings can possibly be made.

One area where many firms find immediate reductions in time, money and errors is by integrating systems, for example, by ensuring that different systems communicate with eachother better. Mortgage brokers often use a variety of systems to run their businesses, including CRM and sourcing systems and effective integrations should mean that client data should only be entered once. Every time a piece of information needs to be re-typed, aside from the unnecessary time and hassle, is an opportunity for human error.

In summary, I think that we all know that data security is just too important to a modern business to be taken for granted. As an industry we know that the technology exists to demonstrate best practice which is surely what we all should be working toward. The regulator will also increasingly focus on how intermediaries are running their businesses and the procedures in place.

One area that is certainly not up for debate is the need for every intermediary firm, whether a one-man band or national company, to have an effective back-up system for its data.

Most of the conversation around data security may feel like something of a ‘stick’ but I’d argue that the ‘carrot’ for intermediary firms is peace of mind. Every intermediary should be confident that their client data is protected and should there be any sort of crisis in their business such as a catastrophic technical failure their business information, compliance data and customer records are protected.

Paul Duckworth, director of technology firm the Charlbury Group

 

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