A Top-Tier U.S. Bank
Client: A Top Tier U.S. Bank
Challenge: Manage and support a slew of revenue generating Web sites
Solution: Shore up its existing application management, security and compliance capabilities by partnering with CSC
Results: As a result of our strong support of the bank’s key revenue generating Web applications, the bank has also turned to CSC to manage and support its critical internal business applications
The CSC Difference:
Application Excellence - As a result of our strong support of the bank’s key revenue-generating Web applications, the bank also turned to us to manage and support its internal business applications. For example, we manage the bank’s PeopleSoft application set, which frees up its HR resources to focus on new application development and critical projects during a time of streamlining and consolidation.
Extensive Audit Controls - We help the bank achieve compliance by regularly engaging in SAS 70 Type II auditing activities and programs where our controls are consistently tested, retested, validated and updated to provide for effective operations. Performing extensive audits in our own business — an average of one per week — strongly positions us to help our clients understand and achieve compliance requirements and maintain their good standing by drawing upon the combined skill of our more than 1,000 security professionals and 100 information risks managers with SAS 70 Type II expertise.
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As this bank’s community of Web sites — which covered everything from commercial banking and credit cards to mortgages and international loans — grew in popularity, profitable transactions multiplied, as did availability, security and compliance challenges.
Bank executives became especially concerned that the Internet traffic streaming directly into its data center created the potential for attacks and outages that could disrupt the bank’s ability to generate revenue with online services.
Like other financial institutions, the bank also needed to ensure the daily integrity of sensitive financial data for its customers and their transactions. A breach could have caused the bank to incur hefty fines and other sanctions from regulators — while destroying hard-won brand equity and a sterling image as a customer champion.
To avoid a damaging lapse, the bank sought to shore up its existing application management, security and compliance capabilities by moving the responsibility for hosting its customer-facing Web sites outside the organization.
Online Banking Available, Secure and Compliant
Our team of experts worked closely with bank shareholders to deliver high-availability, effortless compliance and seamless scaling — all with the kind of world-class security we also provide to organizations such as the U.S. Department of Defense and the National Security Agency.
When the bank wanted to implement an upgrade or new initiative, we aligned our team members specializing in security, networking, databases, operating systems and applications to think creatively and architect a solution that addressed the bank’s specific needs.
Today, we support the bank’s Web servers, databases and applications. Internet traffic streams into our CSC-owned and -operated data centers. Our managed hosting solution incorporated barriers that insulate the bank’s data center from intrusion and attack, with processes and procedures typically exceeding those of the mandatory requirements.
Availability, Security, Compliance and More
Today’s banking customers expect fast online transactions. With our help, the bank is meeting those expectations. For the bank’s most critical applications, we have put in place service level agreements that set a target of no more than 4 minutes per month of downtime. While in most months there is zero downtime, if a disruption does occur, we respond quickly — in 15 minutes or less — to address the problem.
From 2004, when we began hosting approximately 10 of the bank’s mission-critical front-end Web sites, to today, as the bank continues to benefit from a multibillion-dollar online business,the bank continues to run smoothly out of our secure data centers. And when it comes to achieving full, efficient compliance, the bank continues to draw on our ability to engineer solutions that meet stringent security and other requirements, both internal and external.But high availability, proven security and efficient compliance are only part of the story. We have also helped the bank realize additional value in unexpected ways, such as:
• Driving Revenue with Improved Strategic Focus. By shifting Web site hosting to us, the bank freed key staff members to focus on other revenue-generating efforts, such as business application development.
• Supporting Growth with Rapid Scaling. Reduced cycle times for adding data center resources and space and increased bandwidth allow the bank to continue an expansion strategy, confident that the Web infrastructure will scale as quickly as needed.
• Maximizing Value with Cost Savings. By leveraging economies of scale, the bank is able to benefit from a highly trained and skilled technical staff and securely hosted Web applications without a large operational expenditure to train internal staff.
Why CSC?
In the hosting industry, we’re truly in a unique position. Working with us, our clients experience the cost-competitiveness, speed and intimacy of a hosting provider while benefiting from the depth of resources, breadth of capabilities and inherent security of a global leader in technology-enabled business services and solutions.
Our mission is to enable our clients to derive optimum value from their application investments by helping them to maximize the reliability of the application infrastructure, the availability of the information and the security of their data.