Google, Microsoft and Amazon are growing their presence in the Australian banking sector, as the prudential regulator acknowledges their agile, cloud computing solutions can improve the security of IT banking and help bring products to market faster.
Up Bank, which claims to be one of the world’s fastest-growing online banks, has partnered with Google and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority for over a year ahead of its launch in October last year to help the regulator become comfortable with Google’s cloud.
Up says safety was a core focus, including automating controls using a Forseti programme that conducts real-time system risk auditing. This was seen as an improvement compared to other banks which usually perform sporadic manual audits in their own data centres.
APRA has also been impressed with Up’s emergency management, which can be seen as a temporary measure the entire banking system switching over to Google servers in Singapore in 90 minutes.
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and IBM also partner with Australian banks to provide cloud computing services, often using multiple players as part of multi-cloud strategies.
APRA updated its cloud computing guidelines in September last year, noting that banks ‘ developments in cloud computing over the previous three years have increased APRA-regulated entities ‘ ability to manage the risks involved.
Angelo Joseph, head of customer engineering in Australia and New Zealand for Google Cloud, said the tech giant is talking to many banks around the world about automating workflows into product management for security operations.
Earlier this month, IBM told delegates that it created a specialist, financial services cloud at its Cloud Innovation Exchange event in Sydney. Its first industry-specific cloud was designed to meet increased regulatory, security and resilience standards and has launched with Bank of America.