It’s a big deal! Three network solutions to help financial institutions advance

If you had to explain what a bank is to a third-grader, you probably wouldn’t go along the lines of a financial institution that is licensed to accept checking and savings deposits, make loans etc. Instead, you could simply say it’s a synonym of dependability, a peace of mind, if you will. Obviously enough, that kind of description should also pertain to enterprise networks used in this line of work.

So it doesn’t come off as a surprise that for many IT teams in the banking industry, having a network that is secure, reliable, and able to handle sensitive customer data is top of mind. Financial institutions rely on their networks to provide uninterrupted access to critical services, such as online banking and trading platforms 24/7. This poses the first major challenge: eliminating downtime that can lead to significant damages, both financial and reputational.

Secondly, banks need to comply with very specific regulations that govern the handling of user data. Especially today, with the NIS2 Directive being now in full force and effect. The regulation which identifies banking and financial market infrastructures as vital for the economy and society, has significantly tightened the screws on the EU cybersecurity rules introduced in 2016, imposing a new legal framework to keep up with an evolving cybersecurity threat landscape.

To increase their network security posture, many financial organizations implement a vast array of solutions, including Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs) with access control lists and distributed, physical or virtual firewalls. Unfortunately for the IT teams and their resources, in reality such measures are rather expensive, complex, and burdensome to plan, deploy, and maintain. Even more so, when we talk about highly sophisticated and complex environments, like banks.

But what if… security was already embedded in the very way the network is designed and built? With the Extreme Fabric Connect solution, a technology based on the Shortest Path Bridging standard (IEEE 802.1aq), financial institutions can seamlessly connect any device, application, or user, regardless of their location easily, but more importantly – securely. Thanks to its industry-leading capabilities such as hyper-segmentation and stealth topology (discussed in more detail here and here), IT teams have a far easier time protecting against cyber threats, safeguard customers' sensitive financial information, and comply with regulations like GDPR and the NIS2 directive.

What’s also worth mentioning, a good fabric solution provides a dramatic boost to network reliability. With Extreme Fabric Connect, organizations can build a robust network infrastructure that is designed for high availability and resiliency. This means they can ensure their digital banking services are available to customers around the clock, with minimal to no downtime or disruptions.

Additionally, and not less importantly, today’s organizations need to be able to scale their network infrastructure up or down in order to meet the shifting demands of their customers. In that context, a fabric network is an architecture that provides a highly scalable, agile, and automated network infrastructure, enabling organizations to respond rapidly to changing business needs. Whether it’s deploying new services and applications or connecting new remote locations to the enterprise network, with the Extreme Fabric Connect solution, financial institutions can act quickly, moving at the speed of their customers and employees.

The network is a crucial element affecting every financial firm process. It drives their operations, workflows, internal communications, customer interactions... basically everything they do on a day-to-day basis. By modernizing their IT infrastructure, financial institutions can create a better customer experience while reducing costs and increasing efficiency. To support these initiatives, enterprise networks need to remain reliable and fast. And whenever there is a need for a better network performance, you can’t go wrong putting your money on SD-WAN.

To prove that point, let’s take a look at the case of Banca Popolare di Sondri.

With the impressive age of more than 150 years, Banca Popolare di Sondri is one of the oldest financial institutions in Italy. The company employs nearly 3,000 people across 500 branches and a digital presence, offering services to individuals, businesses and public organizations. This highly distributed environment, coupled with lack of WAN visibility across the organization, made it difficult for the IT team to deliver new digital services which required high-performance. To make it worse, network performance issues were difficult to identify and address.

In order to gain visibility into their network and improve network performance, Banca Popolare di Sondri decided to implement ExtremeCloud SD-WAN. In short, the technology allowed the organization’s IT team to manage its network more efficiently, resulting in better customer experiences and organizational efficiencies.

Speaking more precisely, new management policies provided instant insight into how applications and services are performing at every site connected to the WAN. Moreover, performance alerts are both highly-targeted and granular, providing administrators with the right information so they can quickly identify, assess, and troubleshoot issues. Finally, with its deeper visibility and insight into network performance, ExtremeCloud SD-WAN gave the company the much-needed confidence to plan for future support of digital services.

Up to this day, many financial institutions manually screen money-laundering alerts to make final decisions on their validity. This method, however, is inherently prone to oversight due to the volume of data involved and the sheer fact that all people make mistakes. Network analytics has the potential to significantly improve the effectiveness of anti-money laundering programs.

By leveraging the power of data analytics, financial institutions can also gain insights into customer behavior, preferences, and needs, and then use it to develop personalized products and services that meet the specific needs of individual customers. For example, identifying trends and patterns in customer’s spending and offering the targeted promotions and discounts on products and services that are relevant to them is sure way to increase customer loyalty, and also generate new revenue streams.

With ExtremeAnalytics – an application integrated into Extreme Networks’ Universal Platform Series, VSP series, Summit Series, ERS series, SLX platforms and all ExtremeCloud IQ controllers – user behavior on the network can be better understood, level of user engagement can be identified, and business application delivery for optimized quality of experience can be ensured.

For context-based visibility into network activity, ExtremeAnalytics correlates all data collected from users, devices, and applications in a single data store. The optional deployment of the Traffic Sensor appliance allows real time analysis in third party environments. Integrations with Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Microsoft Azure allow users to obtain workload and application flow visibility into their cloud environment.