Financial Services Roundtable’s CTO Dan Schutzer walks us through his idea for an online safety deposit box, and if clients can ever, or will ever, completely trust their financial data in the cloud.
“Sensitive data is a fuzzy term I would say. Today people are beginning to store sensitive data in the cloud. You get an iPhone or an Android phone, you put in your calendar or contact list. You might even have password managers and that gets stored in the cloud, albeit encrypted. Or it's stored in the cloud without our realizing it much to our chagrin. Credit cards. Checking account numbers. Is that information sensitive? Absolutely. And people are asking if this is safe and can it be trusted, particularly as the data gets more sensitive. People will ask this question even more.
But people are getting more used to storing things in the cloud, and they may feel the same way about sensitive documents. Maybe. People will look for a vendor who can demonstrate they can store information safely, and encrypted in such a way so I can share information selectively. And they will want the ability to be able to destroy that data.
On the other hand, there's convenience. It's just too easy. How about my information with TurboTax and running my taxes online on the cloud. Every now and then you see something in the news, but you get complacent. You think, 'This hasn't happened to me.' We know that cloud based servers for consumers are being pushed really hard by Apple, Google and Facebooks of the world and they're not slowing down. They’ll do their best, and assure you, and make it so convenient and useful. When you hear something horrific, it stops briefly. Just like everyone was worried about the financial crisis, and now they're invested again.”
