Author: jalfonso

Financial Technology is a growing industry and how will it shape the future of business transactions?

Image Source: https://letstalkpayments.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/SEA-FinTech-companies.png

In an article, written by Rebecca Campbell Fintech is drastically growing in the Asian market.

For example in India, they demonetized the banknotes, the Rs 500 and Rs 1000. How does this affect people’s wealth? Also inside the country many people are adopting Bitcoin, but are the conventional banks able to keep up?

While FinTech and Financial Information Systems are both directly related to each other. It’s important to note how the importance of FIS will become in the near future.

Countries such as China and Japan has drastically increased their investments in FinTech. There has also been legal agreements between countries promoting FinTech.

Countries and companies themselves will now have to invest more into Financial Information Systems and the need to keep these systems secured and efficient are becoming more urgent than before.

Are You Taking Your Online Security Seriously Enough?

In an article written by Banking Tech, the Internet Registry SIDN reported that only “6% of online banking websites were using Domain Name System Security Extension.”

Mobile Banking and Financial Information Systems both contain sensitive and confidential information. Big banks and those who develop FIS should take security seriously.

The article focused specifically on the UK Banking market, however this issue is well prevalent in the US market.

Online banking is on the rise and unfortunately banks aren’t able to gain a security advantage over the hackers.

How does security vulnerabilities affect the FIS? Hackers take advantage of security loop holes or vulnerabilities in the system. If banks have poor online banking security, then it would make it easier for a hacker to exploit the Financial Information System.

While hackers have had unfortunate success in stealing consumer’s bank accounts, if hackers can get into the bank’s master data they can do a lot of harmful transactions.

While 100% immunity from hacking is impossible, it is possible for banks to make it very difficult for hackers to exploit their systems and ultimately deter online hacking.

How Fintech is evolving and How Does that Affect Financial Information Systems?

In an article written by Chris Skinner, he argues that Fintech has grown so much that it is difficult to use “Fintech” as an umbrella term to describe all of the processes it encumbers.

The author describes that Fintech firms have three business models to choose from.

1. Creating a New Financial Structure: This path has been helpful in raising funds for start-ups by connecting them with donors, rather than approaching a bank for a loan.
2. Removing Friction from Financial Markets: This can be applied by creating an alternative system that can be setup much quicker, in comparison of the setting up through the traditional bank system.
3. Reducing Costs and Overcoming Inefficiencies: Banking systems are much slower and cost more to run efficiently.

Overall, Fintech aims at reducing the limitations of a traditional banking system. Financial Information System are the backbone of Fintech system, in that the FIS does all of the data processing and established a list of controls.

While Fintech cannot replace the bank as a whole, it is important to remember that while banking systems are generally slower and outdated these systems take years to develop because of the amount of testing and development that is required to keep these system secured. While Fintech aims at creating faster solutions for start-ups, I argue that we should also consider the amount of testing placed on these Fintech systems. Remember its your money, wouldn’t you want it to be secured as possible?

In an article written by Mike Elgan, the way we use our personal devices can not only put our personal data at risk, but also the confidential data of their company.

The article provides a list of 5 new security concerns. However, I will highlight a few which can have a direct impact on a Information Systems Confidentiality.

Link to Article

1. Be wary of your selfies:

Elgan argues that with the high resolution of today’s mobile phones, the camera itself can accurately capture our fingerprints, which hackers could use to make prints and bypass biometric systems. While it may seem unlikely, it’s always a possibility.

I would also like to add to that topic of being aware of what you’re background is. If you’re at work, you would want to make sure no confidentiality information can be picked up from the background. Such as passwords written on the dry erase board.

2. Do you really know what your Mobile apps are sending to their servers.

We all download different mobile apps for their different purposes. However, we may not necessarily know what is occurring in the background. The author used the example of Meitu, an app from China which was sending back information back to their servers including the mobile carrier and IP address.

This can pose a problem for Information Systems because we link our company emails to our personal devices, we send texts to our bosses and coworkers, and we may use the companies Wi-Fi.

Essentially our mobile devices are becoming gates to unlocking the doors to our servers.

At the end of the day, while we can never fully secure our data we can still utilize this knowledge to be more wary and make better decisions as to how we use and monitor our personal devices and our company’s data.

 

 

Link to the full Article:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/shelliekarabell/2017/01/29/sharing-economy-nice-but-does-it-create-real-jobs/3/#8dc39ff4f1e4

The Sharing Economy Main Sectors:

1. Travel
2. Transportation
3. Finance
4. Labor
5. Streaming

The sharing economy has become a booming source of services and revenue in the market. Airbnb has an estimated value of $30 billion and Uber is estimated at $68 billion.

The question now becomes is this a “phenomenom” or is it a necessity in our growing world. Shellie Karabell, describes the sharing economy as “changing the way established businesses work.”

“The sharing economy is requiring on-demand insurance” Denis Duverne

Sharing economies allow people to provide services or goods to customers with little or no capital. It also removes the needs for business organization such as managers and associates, you are your own boss.

While the sharing economy has become an extra source of income or a full-time job for some people. What is the effect on the economy as a whole? It brings the question of liability and consistency.

For example, if you were to become an Uber driver and you pick up a passenger and for whatever reason the passenger gets hurt because there was a car accident, Who is held liable? Uber or the driver? While Uber is a business, to what extent are the Uber drivers known as self-contractors compared to employees?

While the sharing economy may be providing an easier to services, it’s affecting the current business model and it brings up the question to what extent can the sharing economy hold up to the demand.

 

For the past two weeks we have been learning about the structure of a financial information system. I found this article to be interesting because it revolves around the hardware or infrastructure that supports the FIS.

David Weldon the author of the article predict 4 major moves in 2017.

1. More systems are turning to cloud computing rather relying on its own in-house servers. Upgrading the physical hardware every couple of years is an expensive investment and as more companies are offering cloud computing as a service, why not pay them and worry less about maintaining your own system.
2. Vendors are working together to minimize their faults and improve the services offered to their clients.
3. Data efficiency and security are always a main concern for customers.
4. Systems will be able to reach a point where they can make predictions, whether it is a forecast or a recovery time from a downfall.

While the author did point out great topics, I would also like to add one more bullet point to the list. I think the Internet of Things deserves a mention. While the author did briefly touch on IoT, I believe that we will see an increase of IoT products and services this year. This could affect FIS, in which IoT devices will be able to read and analyze data, such as scanning a Goods Receipt document and automatically creating a transaction that will update the Master Data.

Article Link: http://www.information-management.com/news/infrastructure/4-predictions-for-cloud-computing-and-machine-learning-in-2017-10030720-1.html

Organizational Growth and Data Security

Article URL:

http://www.information-management.com/news/security/organizational-complexity-greatest-threat-to-cybersecurity-study-finds-10030706-1.html

I found this article from the website Information Management to be very relevant to the topics discussed in class this week. The article was discussing that the number one threat to their information systems is their “organizational complexity.”

The reason for this is that most security features are “too difficult” for employees to utilize and use. The article describes that most employees are accessing company data on their personal devices many times on public or unsecured network connections.

In class we learned about master data and how different department have different views on the master data. Having each department with a different view not only promotes a Segregation of Duty, but it could also limit the amount of access an intruder can have when they breach the information system.

However, that also poses the question how can information system respond better to hacking intrusions. As the article claimed, we want to ensure that employees are productive and the information system will connect all departments, but at the same time we need to address the issues surround data protection. How can we guarantee the integrity of the data, if a security breach has occurred?