Are you an IT Superhero Barcelona?

written by Danny Vicente and Garry Senna, Global Financial Services Industry Marketing

Barcelona Spain Barcelona, the cosmopolitan capital of Spain’s Catalonia region, is known for its art and architecture.

Don’t forget the food Garry, oh the food.

HaHa Great point Danny, but this week it will be ‘known’ for a Cisco Live premier event with over 12,000 attendees from all over the world.  Showcasing how Cisco brings people and information securely together.

Danny; you and I will be in the world of solutions representing Financial Services (FSI)

Danny what do you think the three most prevalent themes we will be engaging customers with over the course of the event?

Great question Garry.  There are easily three themes that play front and center in everyone’s mind. 1) Security or Trust as I like to call it in Financial Services 2) The End User Experience 3) What you and I call the “Invisibility of Technology”

Danny how about you talk about trust we both discuss the End User and I can handle the last one

Great Garry

Security

Security, as it should be being top of mind for every institution. With one breach or bad actor an entire company or a Brand value can be compromised, and it can happen so fast.  In the context of financial institutions Security really equates to trust.  Think about what these financial institutions are carrying for us and the important of it all.  Without trust, they’d never survive, because we’d never allow them to hold our assets.

As things get more sophisticated and complex with our / my information and will so many people “touching it “how is it protected?

Cisco really is a thought leader in this area. And financial institutions have to be prepared to protect you from every angle.  There’s a new global economy, “the hacker economy” and one of those hacker’s primary targets is financial institutions.

Danny walk me though a customer experience with let’s say a bank

I’m sure by now you’ve read many cases of ransomware attacks around the globe, but what you probably don’t hear as much about is the phishing schemes.  Hackers use various social channels to learn who’s who within the banks and formulate phony emails to trick employees into letting these hackers into the systems.  I once heard a story of a company’s controller being sent an email from what he thought was the CEO requesting a $100,000 be sent to XYZ.  The controller did the funds transfer only to find out later the email wasn’t from his CEO and was in fact a phishing/bad actor!  Cisco is helping financial firms stop these hackers before they start.

End User Experience

We can credit Apple with this. Users have come to expect and dare I say demand a seamless experience when it comes to their digital assets. Long gone are the days when you needed to call your bank PRIOR to an international trip to let them know you were traveling aboard to get their ‘permission’ to use YOUR credit cards. Now once you insert your chipped credit card you are protected. Users have an expectation that they will always be able to connect to the internet and access all their assets on their terms.  Users are now trained to EXPECT technology to speed up processes, solve problems for them quicker, and generally make their experience simpler with them more in control.

Plus, there is the cool factor. they want their financial institutions to have the latest and the greatest technology to feel good about the company they are working with. I mean who wants to stand in a teller line when you can pre-schedule a teller interaction?  Fun fact: most people would consider a non-traditional bank, Amazon, Google, Apple, if they offered banking services because of those user experiences.  This is really the level of “cool” financial institutions are reaching for.

Invisibility of Technology

Cisco really is a thought leader in this area. technology really is invisible to most people. X’s and O’s is how they would describe it. Like electricity the average person kind of understand how it works but is really not to enamored with it.  That all changes when your power goes out or in our example when your data is compromised.

What was INVISBLE now becomes visible, your personal information your health records, your financial history, the details of your life. Financial institutions have a trust level established with their customers and financial institutions have to be prepared to protect you from every angle.  There’s a new global economy, “the hacker economy” and one of those hacker’s primary targets is financial institutions.

At Cisco our passion it to keep your data INVISBLE with you in charge of it.

If you are at Cisco live come back and take a selfie with us – if not follow us on twitter @CiscoFSI @Danny_Vicente77 and @GarryS as we will be bringing you live updates about what our customers and partners care about.