In the fast-paced world of financial services, where even a millisecond can make a significant difference, network engineers play a critical role in maintaining the stability, security, and efficiency of complex network infrastructures.

As a result, it’s no surprise that the adoption of network automation has become a game-changer across the business landscape. In fact, more than 50% of enterprises have begun to automate their networks, many of them within the Financial Services Industry (FSI).

But, the real question is: are you one of them?

If the answer is no, we’re here to show you that network automation isn’t just an option, but rather a strategic imperative for financial institutions to thrive in an ever-evolving landscape.

What Drives the Need for Network Automation in the Financial Services Industry?

Network engineers in the financial services industry face numerous challenges in managing and maintaining their networks.

These challenges can range from cyberattack threats and stringent compliance requirements to the high complexity of network operations. Understanding the impact of these challenges is the first step to implementing solutions that optimize network management.

Network Security and Threat Mitigation

With cyberattacks expected to rise sharply in coming years, it’s absolutely critical that organizations harden their security posture.

We understand that Financial Service enterprises are under constant threat. This is precisely why we’ve designed our security and compliance portfolio to exceed expectations and deliver a security posture which is simply unattainable with conventional methods. This ensures that your network upholds the confidentiality, integrity, and availability your customers expect.

Compliance and Regulatory Requirements

The benefits of configuration standardization and maintenance are well understood. Continuous compliance is critical to any industry’s success, as it ensures regulatory requirements and industry best practices are met daily. Unfortunately, for many reasons, compliance is difficult to achieve in a highly complex and dynamic network. Even deliberate changes to the network are accompanied by significant risks. While these adjustments might initially appear effective, closer examination frequently reveals instances of unsuccessful implementations and unintended consequences.

The evolving landscape of business requirements, security mandates, and industry standards places significant stress on internal security teams, compelling them to operate swiftly in order to fulfill the organization’s security and compliance needs. This challenge is compounded by the stringent accuracy requirements these operations demand. In the contemporary era, a flawless approach is imperative.

Network Availability and Performance

It comes as no surprise that the availability and performance of networks is a major challenge network engineers face in FSI. One of the main reasons for this challenge is the presence of equipment running software images that are several releases behind what is currently recommended. The largest network vendor, Cisco, reports that 80 percent of customer-managed equipment is running older versions of software that leave networks “less reliable, less secure and less efficient.”

There are many reasons why organizations have chosen to avoid upgrades. For example, organizations often avoid upgrades in an effort to minimize costs. This is understandable, given the high operational costs incurred when upgrading equipment at scale. Organizations may also avoid software upgrades in an effort to minimize downtime. However, this is counterproductive because of the high risks associated with running obsolete code.

Without updated software, networks are at a high risk for a very costly outage or security breach.

Utilizing Network Automation to Address Challenges in the Finance Industry

Network automation offers tremendous benefits to Financial Services. It allows organizations in FSI to focus their efforts on strategic projects that drive the business forward by freeing up enterprise teams from the firefighting and manual tasks traditionally associated with network management.

Firstly, adopting network automation allows your business to improve customer experience. Highly performing networks drive better customer experiences, improved application performance, more revenue, and reduced risk of exposing customer data.

Network automation helps organizations improve internal efficiency, accuracy, and productivity. By automating the time-consuming, repetitive tasks associated with network management, team members can focus their attention on the strategic initiatives that move the needle forward and reduce the time needed to deliver on these key initiatives. Simultaneously, network automation elevates the level of precision in these operations.

Network automation also delivers the significant benefit of having more control over your network security, ensuring security policy is applied correctly across the entire network. A Single Source of Truth (SSoT) aggregates data from multiple sources and provides a single unified point of access to this data. By serving as the definitive repository of data, SSoT ensures that network configurations, policies, and information consistently align with the predetermined intended state. This enforcement of uniformity minimizes configuration errors, reduces the risk of security vulnerabilities, and enhances operational efficiency.

This helps to more easily maintain the intended state of your network, by integrating all of the devices, telemetry data, and analytics that comprise a network. The outcome is a network that not only boasts enhanced security and reliability but also exhibits the agility and adaptability needed to meet evolving business requirements, ultimately enabling organizations to achieve their goals with precision and effectiveness.

The Network to Code Difference

The benefits of network automation for financial services enterprises are clear.

However, undertaking network automation is a complex and challenging journey, including cultural, technical, and workflow changes across the technology team. That’s where Network to Code comes in. Our Fast Track Solutions represent the most common use cases and challenges network organizations are facing today, ranging from Configuration Management to Security and Compliance.

In addressing the most pressing challenges faced by network engineers, Network to Code has deployed Fast Track Solutions that are rooted in a NetDevOps and data-driven approach to network automation. Fast Track Solutions are broken down into five major categories that are ready to be implemented for your organization: Configuration Management, Network Planning & Design, Network Operations, Cloud Networking, and Security & Compliance.

To address the threats, stringent compliance requirements, availability, and performance demands faced by network engineers in FSI, network teams can turn to the solutions offered by Network to Code’s Configuration Management, Network Operations, and Security & Compliance Fast Track Solutions.

Configuration Management: The solutions we’ve developed for configuration management are crafted to guarantee networks function with a remarkable level of predictability, scalability, and dependability. These solutions encompass tasks ranging from outlining the desired state and rectifying deviations from compliance to ensuring the seamless implementation of extensive configuration modifications. By harnessing our solutions, our clients gain the ability to maintain absolute authority over their network configurations, effectively preventing both major and minor outages caused by flawed configurations.

Network Operations: Our Network Operations solutions are like having your most reliable and efficient engineers available around the clock without interruption, dedicated to addressing incident management, software upgrades, and maintenance needs. These solutions dramatically reduce costs, often providing rapid capital recovery in under a year.

Security & Compliance: Through our Security & Compliance solution, it’s possible to guarantee compliance with industry standards and best practices that extend beyond the date of audit to the entire life of the network. Additionally, our solutions possess the capability to monitor, uphold, and resolve vulnerabilities, patches, and software iterations across all managed devices.