With the development of the IBM Cloud for Financial Services, our aim is to enable financial institutions to confidently host key applications and workloads. To achieve this, the platform leverages “Keep Your Own Key” encryption capabilities backed by the highest level of security certification commercially available. [1] Additionally, the IBM Cloud Framework for Financial Services – developed in collaboration with Bank of America and Promontory – aims to establish a new generation of cloud for enterprises, with common operational criteria and streamlined compliance controls to help banks more effectively manage security and compliance in hybrid cloud environments.
Growing IBM’s financial services ecosystem
To truly unlock all of the benefits of the industry’s first financial services ready cloud platform, IBM has built a secured partner ecosystem where banks will be able to transact with more than 50 Independent Software Vendor (ISV) partners and SaaS providers. New partners are joining each month, and many have started the onboarding process of their solutions to the IBM Cloud for Financial Services.
Supported by a Cloud Engagement Fund established as part of a $1B investment in our ecosystem, IBM is helping to accelerate the adoption of our platform for these new partners by addressing financial and technical obstacles. The fund gives IBM the ability to create financial frameworks for partners, layering in cloud credits and technical resources to help launch impactful business relationships.
IBM will guide ISV partners through each step of the onboarding process, which includes a security controls assessment, workload migration, and readiness validation. This process supports partner compliance initiatives with the IBM Cloud Framework for Financial Services requirements and efficient onboarding through a systematic approach supported by IBM’s technical, security, and regulatory teams.
The outcome of a successful ecosystem
IBM’s ecosystem of technology partners will help bring innovative solutions to market that can enhance our financial institution clients’ offerings in the areas of customer experience, core banking applications and payments, risk and compliance management, cybersecurity, and financial reporting, to name a few.
For the IBM Cloud for Financial Services, significant value is derived from ecosystem participants — a function of how well banks and ecosystem partners work together. The more each embraces the platform, the higher the potential for these businesses to see accelerated value. The goal is rapid adoption of public cloud for banking and managing sensitive data workloads, allowing both banks and solution providers to innovate securely at speed, while reducing operational overhead associated with security and compliance.
The onboarding process supports a growing partner ecosystem that can help create a secured place for highly-regulated financial institutions to conduct business.
[1] The Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) Publication 140-2 is a U.S. government computer security standard used to approve cryptographic modules. It is issued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Level 4 is the highest level of security.