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The Future of Scalable Digital Architecture in Fintech

The financial technology industry has experienced significant transformation in recent years. With millions of users relying on digital platforms for everything from mortgage decisions to loan forgiveness programs, scalable and high-performance software solutions have become essential. Fintech companies need architectures that can handle vast amounts of real-time data while ensuring seamless and personalized experiences for users. After combining my experience in the fintech industry with my expertise in implementing cutting-edge data tracking solutions at Target, I believe the key lessons listed below are crucial for designing digital infrastructure that supports the ever-growing demands of financial platforms.

Scalability is Critical

Scalability is critical given the growing demand for fintech platforms, as financial services cater to the needs of thousands and sometimes millions of concurrent users. To attract and retain users, these platforms must provide real-time recommendations that best fit users’ needs. Providing users with timely credit recommendations, customized mortgage and insurance solutions and/or financial insights based on considerable fixed and volatile variables requires backend infrastructure that supports high-speed data processing, personalization and decision-making.

Working on the mortgage team meant helping members navigate complex financial decisions. The process involves implementing a tracking solution to understand user needs and provide personalized recommendations. From developing complex UIs to building a scalable backend, a deep understanding of how the entire system works is required. This robust architecture led to a strong, effective and fast user experience.

Data Processing and Consumer Personalization

One of the biggest challenges in fintech is managing real-time data processing. The mortgage tracking solution continuously analyzed user actions to refine recommendations. The system had to collect data from the front end, process it instantly, and update the personalized marketplace with relevant mortgage offers. This approach ensured users received the most relevant and up-to-date financial recommendations.

A similar approach was taken when working on the student loan forgiveness program, which aimed to match borrowers with loan relief options based on their eligibility. The project demonstrated the importance of scalable data architecture in managing government-backed financial programs and processing massive datasets in real-time, enabling borrowers to receive personalized recommendations tailored to their financial situations.

A strong example of real-time data tracking came from work done at Target. A patent was developed that allowed for instantaneous data analysis with zero latency. Data could be analyzed immediately as soon as it arrived from the front end. For instance, if a user browsed an item and clicked on it, that action was instantly tracked and used to refine product recommendations. The system relied on Kibana and Elasticsearch, which enabled data analysts to query and visualize massive datasets in real-time.

This solution was implemented across all Target platforms, including Target.com, Circle, RedCard and Target gift registry. The ability to capture and process data in real-time improved user experience by delivering highly personalized product suggestions. The impact of this patent extended beyond Target, with other major companies, such as Bank of America, citing it in their work. Despite advancements in data tracking, many financial institutions still lack truly real-time solutions. Leveraging tools like Elasticsearch can offer significant benefits, such as its exceptional scalability to handle large volumes of data, real-time analytics, accurate product recommendations and seamless integration with other tools like Kibana for data visualization.

Apache Avro, Cloud Computing and Microservices

One of the key challenges in fintech is ensuring that data tracking remains consistent over time. Apache Avro provides a solution by supporting seamless schema evolution. As data requirements change, new schema versions can be introduced while maintaining backward and forward compatibility. This means companies can modify their tracking parameters without losing historical data. For example, suppose a fintech company initially tracks total spending but later decides that spending by category is a more valuable metric. In that case, they can create a new schema version while retaining the original data structure. This approach ensures continuity and prevents disruptions in data analysis.

By using Avro and integrating it with popular tools like Apache Kafka, Apache Spark and Apache Hive, fintech companies can create flexible and scalable real-time analytics pipelines that adapt to changing business needs. This is particularly important in financial services, where regulations and user behavior evolve rapidly. Without a robust versioning system, companies risk losing valuable insights when updating their data tracking strategies.

Modern fintech platforms must also leverage cloud computing and microservices to ensure scalability. Traditional databases struggle to handle the massive influx of data generated by millions of users. Cloud computing solutions such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure provide the necessary infrastructure to scale financial applications efficiently.

Microservices architecture further enhances scalability by breaking down applications into smaller, independent services. For instance, instead of having a monolithic system handling loans, credit card recommendations, security and user authentication, each function can be managed by a separate microservice. This ensures that updates and scaling efforts can be applied to individual components without affecting the entire system. Since microservices operate independently, failure in one service is less likely to bring down the whole system, which is critical for maintaining minimal downtime, essential for financial operations.

For example, microservices in fraud detection enable AI models to analyze user behavior in real-time and instantly flag suspicious activity.

Looking to the Future

The fintech industry will continue to push the boundaries of digital architecture to accommodate growing user demands. Companies that fail to adopt real-time data tracking, cloud-based scalability and microservices risk falling behind in an increasingly competitive market. By leveraging solutions like Elastic Search, Avro schemas and cloud-based infrastructures, fintech companies can provide seamless user experiences, improve financial decision-making and enhance security measures.

As data-driven personalization becomes the standard, fintech companies must prioritize scalability, performance and real-time analytics. The lessons above illustrate how robust digital architectures enable businesses to process large volumes of data efficiently. In the future, financial platforms are likely to integrate even more advanced AI-driven recommendations, real-time fraud prevention, and predictive analytics to further enhance user experiences.

Scalable digital architecture is no longer optional in fintech. The ability to process real-time data, deliver personalized recommendations and maintain high availability will define the success of financial platforms. By embracing cloud computing, microservices and innovative data tracking methods, fintech companies can create resilient, high-performance solutions that meet the evolving needs of their users. The future belongs to those who can build adaptable, intelligent and scalable financial platforms that provide value to users while maintaining efficiency and security.

April 2, 2025
How DevOps Helps Banks Optimize Their Services

A world-renowned bank’s CEO was recently quoted as saying that while there are thousands of manual banks now, the future will see only a handful of digital banks. Along with the rest of the world’s critical business sectors, an overwhelming number of banks are also shifting to virtual platforms. This migration is being orchestrated by some of the best DevOps resources that the global FinTech sector has to offer.

The convenience of personalized services that are always on-demand has incentivized the banking sector’s reliance on DevOps workflows. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck and limited physical banking services, the migration of enterprise banking systems onto the cloud had been in full swing. Most bank employees had to shift to a work-from-home setup, accelerating the use of virtual service delivery.

As per an estimate by the IBM Institute for Business Value, about 59% of the companies surveyed are in various phases of their digital migration and the banking sector is naturally following suit. DevOps teams are tasked with writing software extensions for connecting digital banking services to the end customer in an agile manner.

This article explores why DevOps is slowly becoming an essential foundation for any successful banking institution. We will also discuss how traditional institutions cope with these changes and what benefits they can look forward to once they make the leap to DevOps.

Agile Processes Facilitate Digital Transformation

Most banks these days have been adopting agile processes to stay ahead of the competitive curve. The main motive behind this is to keep up with frequent business requirements that come with efforts to improve clients’ banking experiences. Fine-tuning the project planning and execution processes that drive this improvement are what the DevOps teams would be mainly doing.

Under the Agile methodology, banking applications would be created in small, controllable steps known as sprints. Each step is tested meticulously before it can be considered executable or complete. Before continuing to build on the delivered component, proper channels are followed for real-time feedback and course correction. The end goal is that the customer must get a product that is of value in a much shorter timeframe than is possible through any other development process.

More than even the process and the rules governing it, the DevOps teams involved and their collaboration is a top priority as well as the eventual outcomes. Agile projects behind the most optimal banking services and products must involve continuous planning, testing and integration of finished components.

Faster Success for DevOps Teams in Banking

To successfully drive new digital banking services, large banks need billions in assets and need to gain millions of new customers along the way. It all boils down to shifting their processes to a more granular process and continuously improving upon it.

In situations like these where DevOps practices need to be adopted proactively, the client’s line of business (LOB) teams move to Agile planning strategies fairly quickly. They use a variety of tools to implement Agile and DevOps practices to tackle growing customer demands for their improved digital banking services.

But for this to work seamlessly, the developer experience for both the LOB and IT teams needs to be streamlined. The LOB and IT teams’ efforts can be integrated if the DevOps platform is automated with built-in Agile capabilities and bi-directional integration. This ensures seamless collaboration, faster DevOps implementation and the speedy delivery of banking services and products.

Focused Insights and Better Predictability

Large banks can standardize the internal IT development team on an engineering life cycle management platform, simultaneously providing support to the LOB team via the Agile issue tracking dashboard. Agile life cycle management tools extend an integrated solution for banks. Using these tools, the DevOps teams can be provided with full transparency and traceability of developer data.

Developer-specific capabilities such as source code management, build automation, continuous integration and delivery and Agile planning are more accessible this way. The IT developer community considers Agile workflow management platforms as the benchmark for efficient and continuous business flow. Workflow management platforms and issue tracking portals are the places where most of the Agile planning takes place.

Agile life cycle integration adaptors then link the LOB-defined Agile stories with specific developer tasks in easy-to-manage packets. The developer changes to the application code are tracked within the workforce management tool to draw useful and quantifiable insights from the data. The speed of application delivery is accelerated further because of the connections established between the projects, teams and tools.

Minimizing Service Delivery Mishaps

Using workflow management tools, the team can provide continuous build and integration functionalities. They can deploy automated integration builds on dedicated cloud or on-premises environments which minimizes errors in service delivery. A software bill of materials (SBOM) is generated for each build in the final audit trail which lets developers resolve errors retroactively as well.

A broad picture is created of which new tasks and pieces of code went into the build and what software assets were created. DevOps implementation ensures continuous delivery of the banking application across test and production environments. Errors are reduced throughout the production life cycles of each banking service or product. This reduces the time taken from development to production. A fully automated and auditable delivery pipeline is created to make future deployments even faster.

Reduce Banking Product Release Cycles

DevOps provides a very robust and reiterable foundational environment for the bank’s business to thrive while reducing release cycle time with every iteration. This means every time a new banking service is delivered, the development life cycle is improved bit by bit. In some cases, the release cycle can be reduced by more than half the original time taken.

While service delivery is improved, this also frees up release engineers for urgent tasks crucial to the deployment window. More deployments occur while still keeping the bank or financial institution in accordance with regulatory guidelines.

January 6, 2023
Open Banking Shouldn’t Be Open Season on Your APIs

Open banking has become the latest technological advancement for financial services applications that’s modernizing the industry. For instance, Mastercard recently began its Start Path Open Banking program, which provides select startups the opportunity to use Mastercard’s expertise while learning how to apply open banking to their own business. Open banking is creating new opportunities for revenue sharing and reducing data licensing and transaction fees between financial institutions and their partners.

Customers who take advantage of open banking also gain a more comprehensive, holistic view of their finances so they can be in a stronger position to manage their wealth. Just as importantly, open banking will provide more opportunities to use data for products and loyalty programs across the full spectrum of their organization’s offerings. Financial services companies like Mastercard also believe that open banking programs improve inclusiveness and financial literacy. With greater financial literacy, customers can work to lessen the chances of fraud in their accounts.

This follows an overall trend of breaking down barriers when it comes to connecting financial organizations with consumers through new, innovative financial technologies. In fact, 96% of consumers globally are aware of fintech services, including at least one money transfer and payment. Additionally, U.S. consumers are steadily adopting new fintech, including peer-to-peer payments.

While open banking has the potential to shake up the foundations of the banking industry, there is also the possibility of it becoming a target for threat actors and cybercriminals alike. The reason: application programming interfaces (APIs) that power open banking are being targeted.

Hazards Associated With Open Banking

Open banking uses APIs to connect financial institutions with third-party applications. The Open Banking Project is one of the leaders in providing open source APIs for banking and relies on an open source system for financial services providers to access consumer banking and financial data.

Yet, the more financial services organizations rely on APIs, the greater their attack surface becomes. APIs, as the building blocks of today’s modern web applications, are already a big target for threat actors and a primary attack vector. Banks, and the financial services industry as a whole, are also targets for cybercriminals.

IBM’s X-Force Threat Intelligence Index 2022 noted that finance and insurance organizations were the second-most targeted industries. Further, IBM also found that among those attacks, 70% were against banks and 14% were against other financial organizations. This tells us that while other organizations might make the data breach headlines, banks and financial institutions are most often under attack by threat actors and cybercriminals. While one of the major drivers for this is financial gain, there is also a wealth of data in banking, including personal identifiable information (PII), payment card industry (PCI) data, account and payment information. Much of this can be leveraged on the dark web for financial gain.

Unfortunately, attacks on financial institutions and the APIs that drive much of our engagement won’t change anytime soon. The problem associated with APIs is that, if left unsecured, they can provide threat actors a foothold into sensitive data that can be exploited. Additionally, many organizations don’t have a true understanding of how many APIs they have (many are interconnected) or how these vulnerable endpoints are being protected. It is incredibly difficult to protect something that you don’t even know exists! Adding an additional layer of complexity to the API conundrum is how third-party APIs are often relied upon. Using these sources, while potentially a time-saving strategy, can leave your networks open to attack.

Secure Open Banking Means Protected APIs

If you’re a company that plans to start taking advantage of open banking, it’s important to mitigate some of these threats by establishing sound API protection strategies. First, gain visibility into your entire attack surface. After all, knowing yourself, including your APIs and web apps, along with understanding your enemy, will lead to success on the battlefield (to paraphrase Sun Tzu). Once you have a comprehensive view of your endpoints, including those older and deprovisioned APIs, you can be in a better position to protect against the multitude of threats that they face. Ideally, you will be able to get real-time analysis of traffic hitting your endpoints so you can get a more holistic view of a surface that is always changing.

It should also be emphasized that sophisticated attacks consist of bot armies generating API traffic and attacks. Malicious bots are being leveraged on an ever-growing basis in attacks, including DDoS attacks and account takeovers. While many bot attacks are automated, being able to detect and block them in real-time, when combined with continuous monitoring, can help to lessen the threat posed by bots.

A future with open banking is an exciting prospect due to the fact that it will put financial control back in the hands of businesses and consumers. While there should be a reasonable amount of caution placed in many of the API-centric open banking solutions, there are ways to alleviate these concerns. Strong API security, along with bot blocking and detection, can go a long way toward protecting against modern threats.

November 11, 2022
The Future of FinTech and the Cloud

The integration of FinTech continues to revolutionize the way businesses interact with their consumers. What started as a viable solution to eliminating the need to carry physical currency has now become a multi-billion-dollar industry.

Basically, FinTech is a catch-all term used to describe software, mobile applications and other integrated technologies that improve and automate traditional forms of finance for businesses and their consumers. The financial infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) focuses on enabling FinTech companies to quickly facilitate highly secure transactions among an internal network while improving user experience. The complex (yet efficient) solution helps streamline fiscal transactions while simultaneously eliminating unnecessary steps throughout the transaction process. Ultimately, making financial transactions more affordable and accessible.

The integration of FinTech continues to bolster unprecedented growth within the business sector. The industry’s rapid growth can be attributed to a shift in consumers’ lifestyles towards more accessible and affordable solutions. As a result, FinTech has been able to solidify a prominent role within business operations, however, needs to remain vigilant in adapting infrastructures to satisfy ever-changing consumer and industry demands.

With this goal in mind, FinTech companies have begun to innovate new solutions which include embracing the cloud within its infrastructures. With new integration, companies will have to determine whether using fintech-cloud computing entities will ultimately be an asset in achieving longevity and lucrative business growth or not.

FinTech Meets Cloud

FinTech companies are rapidly turning to the cloud to provide businesses and consumers with effective solutions. According to a research study, 87% of enterprises plan to accelerate their cloud migration by 2025. So, why is cloud computing becoming imperative for FinTech companies to integrate?

1. Agility: For businesses to compete, they must stay ahead of the competitive curve by reacting quickly to market changes. Cloud services satisfy this need by enabling companies to accelerate its scaling process. Businesses can scale their capacity up or down quickly to meet customer demand in real-time. As a result, providing a more cost-efficient solution.

2. Competitive Advantage: Within the financial industry’s competitive landscape, it can be quite difficult for smaller companies to gain significant market share. Likewise, larger corporations struggle to retain customers as internal legacy IT practices hinder reaction rate times to changing customer demands. The cloud provides both entities with a better way to compete by offering a quicker alternative to meeting customers’ demands.

3. Enhanced Customer Experience: Millennials and Gen Z have transformed the banking industry by starting to view finances through the lens of technology. Cloud computing offers FinTech companies the opportunity to promote enhanced customer experience with consumer-centric web applications and improved efficiency metrics. Ultimately, providing the next generation of consumers with an accessible, agile and much more manageable solution that adheres to their technology-savvy lifestyle.

4. Cost-Effective: Businesses can incur significant infrastructure costs while developing and deploying FinTech products for a large customer base. Cloud adoption can help cut down costs by limiting usage, promoting elasticity of its products and adhering to an all-inclusive price.

5. Amplified Security Measures: With the ecosystem of hackers and cybercriminals continuing to evolve, companies must remain proactive in mitigating the potential risk of data breaches and cyberattacks. FinTech applications with weak security measures can compromise customer data and other private information. Consequently, leaving the door open to exploitation by malicious operators. Hybrid cloud architecture provides a more secure framework by allowing companies to build their own solutions in the cloud infrastructure they own, rather than in a shared environment within a shared network. As a result, they can be proactive and help eliminate potential data security risks.

Limitations of FinTech: Enhancing Cloud Integration

Cloud computing integration continues to provide FinTech companies the opportunity to accelerate business growth. While there are a number of FinTech companies that have managed to achieve great success while using these infrastructures, other companies have failed.

Any company that invests in FinTech (or any other public cloud service) is susceptible to potential disadvantages. It’s important that companies begin to identify these potential challenges and actively try to avoid them.

Here are potential limitations to consider:

1. Refusing to Use Existing Tools: Change is difficult to manage. Nevertheless, it’s important that companies continue to embrace new technology as they emerge. If FinTech companies refuse to build platforms using current technology, they run the risk of an influx of user discrepancies. On the contrary, if they decide to scale up, they run the risk of hindering the agility of the entire company. By using existing and open source technology, companies can proactively fix their problems and promote continuity in their infrastructures by eliminating outdated data, obscure patches and massive inefficiencies.

2. Ignoring Scope and Capacity: Using FinTech engineering requires an abundance of capacity planning to ensure an effective solution is created. Without planning, companies run the risk of creating infrastructures that cannot accommodate the volume of metrics used. This can result in killing dashboard performance and making troubleshooting issues impossible. It’s important to plan at every stage regardless of what providers are used.

3. The Desire to Implement More than Required: Amid a fast-paced and competitive industry, FinTech engineers are constantly implementing new innovations to solidify their competitive advantage. It’s important companies continue to innovate and improve their products; however, operations should not stray too far from their original scope of work. Businesses should work to eliminate unnecessary additions within their projects that could result in wasting a considerable amount of time and resources. Keep simple tasks simple.

4. Plan and Evaluate: Businesses need flexibility, independence and a cost structure to thrive. To achieve these marks, it’s necessary for companies to take the time to plan and evaluate each offering to determine which solution accommodates their business needs. Although switching providers might seem doable, doing so can result in a more complicated and expensive solution. Setting long-term objectives before deciding on a provider could make that eventual move simpler for your team.

The integration of FinTech and cloud computing services continues to impact the technology, finance and business sectors. The question of whether a FinTech-cloud computing structure is a more viable solution in businesses remains. By planning and evaluating each financial solution, businesses can determine which FinTech service is the most feasible for optimizing business objectives.

FinTech companies will always continue to provide safe and seamless solutions for their customers, however, it’s the companies who can capitalize on efficiency that will rise to the top. As FinTech and cloud integration continues to revolutionize customer-brand solutions, we will become closer to unveiling the future of FinTech and the lasting impacts it has on society.

September 9, 2022
3xFAIL: IPv6 Fails | Fintech Fails | Firefox Fails

Welcome to The Long View—where we peruse the news of the week and strip it to the essentials. Let’s work out what really matters.

This week: IPv6 gets stabbed in the back, Fintech firms’ valuations are falling, and the latest browser war seems to be over—Firefox lost. (more…)

June 2, 2022
FinConDX: Leveraging DevOps in FinTech
The FinTech industry has experienced remarkable growth during the last couple of years as consumers increasingly turn to online shopping and contactless payments. Financial services organizations are adopting DevOps practices to enable faster software releases, improve quality and fulfill customer expectations. On Dec. 9, financial services and tech leaders will come together at FinConDX Virtual Event to discuss the latest and most effective DevOps, DevSecOps and digital transformation practices and tools you need to thrive in the FinTech industry.

The agenda for FinConDX features a mix of topics, including continuous security and continuous compliance best practices, value stream management, secure development in highly-regulated industries, source code security in financial services, threat detection, incident response, software supply chain attacks, cloud security, emerging technologies and modernization tools.

FinConDX features a stellar lineup of industry experts, including:
- Ravi Lachhman, field CTO at Shipa
- Simon Maple, field CTO at Snyk
- Dan “Pop” Papandrea, director, Opensource Community and Ecosystem at Sysdig
- Ravi Yadalam, head of product for cloud optimization at Harness
- Eric Carter, director of product marketing at Sysdig
- Maurice Evans, director of product management at BluBracket
- Jeff Keyes, VP of product marketing and strategy at Plutora
- Ronen Slavin, CTO and co-founder at Cycode
- Andrew Fife, VP of marketing at Cycode
- Edwin Kwan, application and software security, security advisory at Tyro Payments
- Sanjeev Sharma, SVP, head of Platform Engineering at Trust Bank
- Colin Wynd, head of Real Time Payments Technology at The Clearing House
- Mitch Ashley, CTO, principal at Techstrong Group, Techstrong Research
The virtual environment features five session tracks, live chats, raffles and prices, entertainment and an exhibit hall lined with booths showcasing the latest solutions from leading DevOps companies. In the exhibit hall, attendees will have access to downloadable resources provided by our partner sponsors.

Registered attendees will also receive a link to access the virtual environment on-demand once the live event is over.

To see the full agenda and to register, please visit the FinConDX website.
November 29, 2021
The No-Code Revolution: 5 Industries That Will Win Big

The year 2020 tested the mettle of countless businesses and industries, but those who were able to stay afloat had one thing in common: the ability to adapt to an increasingly digitized world by embracing future-facing technology.

For companies already steeped in the tech world, these changes came more naturally, but not all industries were equally equipped to transform. For those caught on their back foot, the key was to apply existing technologies to old systems and analog problems.

No-code platforms quickly shot to the fore of these innovative solutions, and their importance will long-outlive the pandemic that was the catalyst for their growth. At its core, the no-code revolution is leveling the development playing field and lowering the barrier to entry of digitization. Programmers and non-programmers alike can now create enterprise-grade application software through graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and configuration instead of traditional computer programming.

It is increasingly clear that these tools will form the prevailing wind of innovation, filling the sails of digital transformation for years to come—some have already called it the most disruptive trend of 2021. Yet many industries are only just beginning to realize the possibilities that no-code truly holds. Here are five of the industries that are benefiting most from the no-code revolution, and tips for how companies in each sector can continue to successfully implement no-code tools.

1. Retail
For years, online shopping was a convenience for many consumers. In 2020, it became a necessity.

After a decade spent struggling to keep up with the rise of online conglomerates, the fate of retail industries was already questionable when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Indeed, many of the businesses that first began to fail in the earliest days of the pandemic were retail giants who relied too heavily on their brick-and-mortar appeal. For brands that bit the dust, the “why” is no big secret: they failed to adopt new digital technologies and lost the loyalty of couch-bound customers.

With no-code tools, the transition from “customer-friendly storefront” to “customer-friendly front end” is becoming quicker and easier than ever before. By allowing retailers to develop brand-tailored digital storefronts and progressive web apps that are as easy to design as they are to use, these tools will undoubtedly be one of the keys to success as the retail industry fights through the pandemic and looks toward a sustainable future.

2. Insurance
As with many legacy industries, insurance was long caught in the shadow of flashy innovators from the tech sector. But the push for transformation in insurance came not a moment too soon—not only did the year leading up to the pandemic see insurance leaders set their sights on digital innovation, but it was no-code tools that played a crucial role in leading the charge toward change.

By allowing traditionally slow-moving enterprises to operate with startup agility, no-code tools are giving legacy insurance leaders in previously sheltered markets the edge they need to compete with digital-first newcomers.Today’s consumers increasingly expect a seamless digital user experience with everything from social media to gaming to insurance. With no-code tools, these expectations can be met without the need for high-level programmers or IT professionals.

As they look toward the future, insurers who implement no-code platforms will be able to spend more time focusing on the quality of their products and less time losing customers due to outdated tech, all while cutting costs and simplifying operations at every level of their organization.

3. Banking, Fintech and Payments
Banking, another industry rife with legacy enterprises, has faced many of the same hurdles as its insurance counterpart, and it is for many of the same reasons that no-code development tools have extensive potential in the ever-shifting landscape of banking and its adjacent sectors.

Mobile banking applications have already changed the way that everyday people think about, track and interact with their money. In a digital era where remote functionality is as urgent as it is practical, no-code tools can provide financial enterprises of any size with the opportunity to build, maintain and update consumer-facing platforms that meet customer standards, offer cross-platform integration and uphold necessary private data security.

4. Health Care
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a powerful accelerant for a diverse array of health care technologies, fueling rapid growth in fields like telemedicine and remote patient monitoring. As health systems continue harnessing technology to become more efficient and to improve patient outcomes, no-code tools can provide innovative solutions to multiple problems through the entire process of healthcare and treatment.

Calendaring and scheduling platforms that make it easier for patients to arrange appointments, and easier for providers to keep track of them, can be developed and curated without writing a single line of code. No-code platforms are also one of the simplest ways that health care practitioners can offer user-friendly virtual visits, saving time for patients and providers alike, and minimizing unnecessary trips to and from germ-filled waiting rooms. Additionally, the ability of no-code platforms to turn high-level back-end data functionality into a widely accessible tool will make it easier than ever for health care organizations to log patient data securely and swiftly, which can ultimately be leveraged to track illnesses and find treatments, fast.

With the ease of no-code development, health care professionals can spend less time addressing technical difficulties and more time addressing their patients.

5. Manufacturing
Manufacturing leaders have already expressed a keen understanding of the need for no-code solutions.

Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) have long been tasked with coordinating, executing and tracking the processes at a given factory or plant, but the rigidity that makes MES so useful for IT components of the manufacturing process also makes it difficult to use for shop floor personnel.

Compared to MES, no-code platforms are cheaper to customize, quicker to implement and easier to update in accordance with changing operational needs. As manufacturers are increasingly expected to produce new, customized products with increasing speed and frequency, the need for no-code solutions will go from being a tech trend to an industry necessity.

Unlike many past disruptive trends, which have often been characterized by their uniqueness, the rise of no-code is making innovation easier and more accessible across the board. While the industries listed above—retail, insurance, banking, health care and manufacturing—are each particularly well-poised to benefit from the no-code revolution, these five sectors mark only the beginning of what is to come.

The development capabilities of no-code platforms will only continue to grow in the coming years. So, too, will the reach of these innovative tools.

February 2, 2021
FinConDX: The State of DevOps in FinTech
The FinTech space has grown dramatically this year as more consumers shift their financial transactions online due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Financial services companies are learning how to ship better code, faster by adopting DevOps methodologies. DevOps helps companies develop fast, fail fast and learn fast so they can fulfill customer expectations and deliver quality features faster to market than their competitors. However, the shift to DevOps is not that easy.

The digital transformation journey for banking and financial services organizations can be quite challenging. That is why, on Dec. 3, the top financial services and tech leaders in the industry will come together at the FinConDX Virtual Summit, a free virtual conference focused on the DevOps, DevSecOps and digital transformation practices and tools you need to thrive in the FinTech industry today.

FinConDX features a stellar lineup of industry experts, including:
- Yaniv Yehuda, co-founder and CTO at DBmaestro
- Viktor Farcic, principal DevOps architect at Codefresh
- Sladjana Jovanovic, vice president of payments technology, TD Bank Group
- Shannon Lietz, director of DevSecOps at Intuit
- Sanjeev Sharma, senior vice president, head of automation and platform engineering at Truist
- Rosalind Radcliffe, distinguished engineer at IBM
- Don Duet, CEO and co-founder at Concourse Labs
- Ravi Lachhman, chief evangelist at Harness
- Matt Wilson, senior product manager at GitLab
- Mitchell Ashley, CEO and founder at Accelerated Strategies Group
- Keith Murphy, senior solutions architect at OutSystems
- Jonathan Smart, partner, business agility lead at Deloitte
- John Rzeszotarski, senior vice president of technology infrastructure at PNC
- Dan Garfield, chief technology evangelist at Codefresh
- Gary Gruver, CEO at Gruver Consulting and analyst at Accelerated Strategies Group
The virtual environment features auditoriums with different tracks where attendees can watch the sessions by industry leaders and an exhibit hall lined with booths showcasing the latest solutions from leading DevOps companies. In the exhibit hall, attendees can download resources and interact with partner sponsors including Codefresh, GitLab, WhiteSource, DBmaestro, Harness, Traceable, OutSystems and more.

Breakout sessions and panel discussions will fall under following topics:
- Leading digital transformation
- Emerging technology
- Security and audit
- Modernization tools
Attendees can participate in a scavenger hunt throughout the virtual environment for a chance to win amazing prizes. Participants earn points by visiting booths, watching sessions, downloading resources, networking with speakers in the chat and finding hidden objects in the environment.

Registered attendees will also receive a link to access the virtual environment on-demand for a limited time once the live event is over.

To see the full agenda and to register, please visit the FinConDX website.
November 19, 2020
How to Secure Fintech Applications and Protect Customer Data
All industries are feeling the pain of preventing rising risks to their applications, private information and customers’ data, and it is not surprising that this is especially true in the financial services sector. In fact, fintech companies on average spent more than $18 million in 2019 battling cybercrime, while other markets’ companies spend an average of $13 million addressing cybersecurity concerns each year.

While these numbers can be depressing, a recent virtual roundtable we hosted with some of the best AppSec brains in fintech uncovered three steps organizations can take to secure their fintech applications and protect their customer data. The panel included Erick Lee, director of Security at Intuit; Jeremiah Kung, first vice president and global head of digital cybersecurity at East West Bank; and Karthik Rangarajan, security lead at Robinhood.

The panel discussed AppSec trends, best practices for what is working in their organizations and recommendations for security leader peers who are tasked with addressing application security at their organizations. The group agreed that there’s a lot of creative thinking and exciting work happening around AppSec, and that includes across all of DevOps and engineering, not just those charged with application security. These notions can’t help but leave one feeling optimistic.

While the spirited discussion covered a variety of topics and trends, here are the three high-level recommendations organizations should follow to best secure their fintech applications.
1. 1. Make sure AppSec teams are hiring software engineers. The panelists agreed that security and engineering functions should not operate as separate entities. One participant described why he hires software engineers instead of security engineers. He explained that software engineers know how to create fixes and operate at scale, which is critical for his organization, which manages 1.5 million requests per second. Since many organizations do not have the resources to hire a security engineer, particularly smaller and growing groups, it is especially important to build security into the engineering team.Organizations tend to discover scalable methods of solving problems and accelerating the development process when engineers are engaged with security. Take for example a security concern that delayed an application release. The panelists agreed that unless the issue is a show stopper, security should not delay a release, unless of course there is a compliance concern or potential violation. They recommended for developers do their thing, and let security work hard and try to keep up.
    The panelists explained this is because companies need to keep pace and release products and triage at scale. This is especially true in the fintech space, where winning business is about application features and capabilities. As an example, one panelist illustrated how his company’s focus is trying to ensure developers have paved roads so they can get “speed to benefit to customers.”
    
    To make this happen, his company deployed tools for automation, such as solutions that scan GitHub code for potential issues. They are also leveraging automation to monitor for security problems all through production. The punch line for them is to make security complementary and seamlessly woven into the workflow, it cannot be a secondary process slowing development.
    
    Compliance should be approached as an engineering problem. A significant challenge for financial services companies and fintech continues to be adhering to governance and compliance requirements. One of the reasons is a lack of automation and solutions that scale, which come at significant costs. In fact, one-third of global financial services companies spend more than 5% of their budget just on addressing compliance.Many financial services organizations rely on spreadsheets, PDFs, paper files and email chains to address and prove compliance. Fintech companies continue to address compliance questions using paper documentation and manual work. These methods are clearly not scalable and not sustainable for growing organizations to meet their expanding compliance demands.
    Fortunately, as the panelists uncovered, compliance and governance can be viewed through an engineering lens, as they have seen happen at some of the best fintech companies. One panelist illustrated that at his company he met with compliance experts to learn precisely about their problems, so his team could engineer solutions. After discovering the issues and metrics needed to prove compliance effectiveness, his team introduced automation and new tools to address the issues. His company knows the compliance methods are working if the metrics are being met, he said.
    
    Another panelist added that meeting regulatory compliance within a global organization like his introduces additional challenges of meeting compliance requirements in multiple jurisdictions. But the need to understand where data is and how it is being kept safe is common across the board. If you can address those questions, he said, then proving that the data is safe becomes the main task.
    
    For development and application security to remain sustainable, compliance cannot remain manual and human based. The panelists agreed that it’s unlikely to be able to fully automate all of the reporting and processes needed, but with a goal of 80% automation and 20% manual methods, organizations will be in a much better position.
    
    Security must be proactive. This is a common theme in our industry these days, and it certainly was popular thought the entire roundtable discussion. The panelists highlighted that fintech engineering teams are thinking about compliance and security in a variety of proactive ways. One panelist recalled that he asks his teams to “lean into security and do right by the customer before the company is asked to do so.”
  The areas addressed throughout the discussion ranged to a variety of topics, including how these days security is kept top of mind for engineering leaders during the hiring process. Participants agreed that hiring an AppSec developer is like finding a unicorn. The trick they said is to be more proactive and nurture your own unicorns internally. This can be accomplished by focusing on hiring top security developers and growing them into security roles. The result has significant benefits on all sides. The company will build its AppSec resources and expertise, and employees can value the opportunity to grow and expand their experiences into new areas they may not have known before.
  
  The panelists highlighted that exploring ways to ensure and accelerate approval for security features is a good way to ensure proactive security. One approach is to connect compliance issues that need addressing with security advancements. For example, if the goal to help prevent customer data loss is to add two-factor authentication, one should link a compliance issue that can also be solved by the requested security solution. Decision-makers may look to save budget and pass on simply adding security features, but it will be more difficult to say no to a compliance request. This kind of creative strategic thinking has a way of being a win-win for the company as well as its customers.
  
  The success of AppSec among financial services organizations depends on more than just effective security protocols that secure companies and protect customers. It needs creative, innovative and strategic ideas to enable organizations to have efficient, economical and scalable security. If that sounds like something your organization is seeking, then according to our roundtable panelists our industry has a very bright future.
November 2, 2020
The Role of DevSecOps in Finance App Dev

DevSecOps is critical in developing apps successfully in the rapidly changing and highly regulated finance environment

One of the most important shifts of the past few years in finance and banking was the movement from primarily branch-based banks to mobile-first banks. While these innovative products simplify the end user experience, they also bring up more security concerns, since digital channels expose a number of vulnerabilities. These apps deal with sensitive user data, such as private financial or personal information, which means that the prevention of any type of breach is of utmost importance.

The level of security of a finance app is judged primarily on how well digital transactions and personal data are protected online. Even the smallest security concern can mean that users lose confidence in the app and immediately switch to another provider, often leaving negative reviews in the app stores and damaging the reputation of the company. It does not come as a surprise that the finance industry is one of the most regulated industries in the world: finance apps are required to fulfill the strictest security requirements and offer the latest functionalities at the same time.

Regulatory Concerns in the Finance and Banking Industry

Not only do finance app companies have to comply with traditional finance regulations, but they also are subject to international and local privacy laws. One example is the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into effect in May 2018 and requires companies with ties to the European market to update their data and privacy policies. This affects the finance and banking industry in a number of ways, especially when it comes to getting consent before processing the personal data of users, the right of the clients to request their data to be erased, and additional penalties for data breaches and for failing to comply with such regulations.

Another recent example of changing regulations affecting the finance and banking industry in Europe is the Strong Customer Authentication requirement (SCA), implemented in September 2019. According to this regulation, a secure finance app requires at least two forms of independent authentication elements from its users. These can either be a knowledge element: something only the user knows, such as a password; a possession element: something only the user possesses, such as their smartphone; or an inherence element: something the user is, such as their fingerprint.

Meanwhile, in the United States, the number of potentially applicable regulations make this an even more complex issue. Here, finance app companies might be subjected to a plethora of federal or state licensing or registration requirements and thereby may have to adhere to laws and regulations on both levels, depending on their activity. Providing fintech services in the United States often requires licensing and registration with multiple state regulators including consumer lending, money transmission and virtual currency licenses.

These examples show the additional challenges finance app companies are facing throughout the already challenging mobile development process. Things can be further complicated when developers have to build an app for a global audience with different requirements per country or region. Such companies often have codebases running in multiple different countries; having to manage this complexity while following a variety of regulations can even cause delays in important product releases.

Growing Customer Expectations Require a New Approach

Continuously improving features, maintaining app quality and responding to constantly changing requirements can be a daily challenge for product managers and developers. To tackle these issues, it’s necessary to implement a set of security processes from as early as the planning phase all the way to release—in other words, to create a DevSecOps environment. This can be facilitated by integrating regular information security checks and core security tasks into the software development life cycle to remove previously existing bottlenecks between developers, the security team and the rest of the organization. This approach also helps mitigate risks and allow all contributors to take more ownership and avoid security-related failures.

A DevSecOps environment in the finance or any sector also enables teams to have full control over their stacks and access management and to be able to monitor any and all access within and outside of their environment at all times. Another step forward is shifting the responsibility of security maintenance from the team to a secure and scalable cloud-based CI/CD platform. Automation early on helps developers focus on what matters the most: optimizing their product and developing new features without having to worry about security-related maintenance tasks. It also leaves more time for parts of the process that are essential for safeguarding quality, such as checking code dependencies, threat modeling and detecting flaws before a release.

Building the future’s successful apps in this rapidly changing and heavily regulated space will require adopting an agile, technology-forward mindset and organizational change at the same pace. In the finance industry, it’s especially important to make not only DevOps but also DevSecOps integral parts of the software development life cycle. Only this way can vulnerabilities be minimized across all applications and the different parts of the organization. Fintech, finance and banking apps can only remain competitive if they have solid structural support that enables them to securely connect to—and protect—their users.

September 25, 2020