Global Financial Services Provider Secures External Information Exchange, at No Cost to Partners

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Company Background

Our client is one of the world's leading financial services providers. In addition to its strong presence in the United Kingdom, the company has offices in Europe, the United States, and Asia. Our client works with over 1,500 partners throughout the world and operates several hundred individual branch locations.

Challenges and Requirements

The company offers a Windows®-based application to external financial advisors, trust managers, brokers, and other third-party business partners, through which they place transactions (buy and sell securities, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, etc.). The application transmits files over public networks to a central UNIX® server, which then executes the transactions through various trading systems. After the transactions clear, the server returns confirmation to the appropriate partner’s application.

As our client was preparing for a new release of this system, adding new features and functionality, their Data Security & Compliance Committee determined that the data being exchanged was sensitive in nature. Therefore, strong data protection was needed to meet internal standards and policies.

The company was very familiar with PKWARE as they were already using PKZIP® for compression and file management in their data center to improve operational efficiencies and overall workflow. In addition, several other organizations within the banking and financial services industry had begun using SecureZIP® by PKWARE for data security.

The Solution - SecureZIP PartnerLink

The company was looking for a cost-effective way to securely exchange sensitive data with their external business partners - a method that, when implemented, would expand with their business over time. SecureZIP PartnerLink was a natural choice based on its ability to seamlessly integrate with existing applications, allowing daily operations with external partners to continue without interruption. The fact that the company was already utilizing PKZIP for compression and file management made the upgrade that much easier, achieving complete deployment of the solution within a matter of weeks.

SecureZIP PartnerLink ensures sensitive information remains protected both at rest at the point of origin or destination, and during transit. Our client can distribute an unlimited number of SecureZIP Partner licenses, at no cost to their partners, increasing partner acceptance and adoption of the software. Being a “no cost” solution furthered partner acceptance and eased the adoption process. And, the company can extend their security policies, regardless of the number of endpoints or computer environments involved in the exchange. This assures our client that the solution will grow with their organization as new partners are added.

The Policy Manager functionality of SecureZIP PartnerLink allows administrators to centrally configure encryption settings according to internal policies. This allows the company to extend their data security policies, regardless of the number of endpoints or computer environments involved in the exchange. Our client can now effectively protect the data at the file level, making it impossible for anyone except authorized personnel to access it, whether the data is at rest or in transit being exchanged with partners.

In addition, while SecureZIP PartnerLink allows for encryption of data exchanged with partners, it also provides for the use of an unlimited number of contingency keys which can be added to any encrypted .zip file created on any platform. These contingency keys provide access to the encrypted archives should the primary key or passphrase be lost or compromised. And, SecureZIP PartnerLink supports the use of PKI certificates that comply through the X.509 certificate standard and passwords or passphrases can be added in conjunction with digital certificates.

In the end, our client was able to preserve their corporate brand and avoided the liability risk of sensitive information being lost or stolen. By strongly protecting their information, they eliminated exposing confidential financial and personal information of a large number of influential customers and business partners. Using SecureZIP PartnerLink, the company was also able to secure this information in a cost-effective manner and with minimal technical integration efforts.