Understanding Remote Payments Security

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As remote work continues to play an important role for businesses around the world, organizations, particularly those in the financial services and technology sectors, must shift their focus to remote payments security and online payment gateway.

Although flexible working and remote work policies existed prior to the pandemic, the mass exodus from offices marked a watershed moment for many industries. Many businesses appear to be making this a permanent change. The financial sector is one of the most affected markets, necessitating a completely new approach to operations.

Remote work has numerous advantages, including flexible hours and the elimination of a commute. However, there are several new challenges to overcome on the corporate side in order to maintain operational standards. This is because employees are now working on distributed networks with their own hardware and a personal internet connection. While this will not be a problem for some industries, the privacy and security requirements in payments require FinTech companies to implement new security measures.

There are reasons to be optimistic. ...
... These solutions for the financial sector rely on an understanding of remote payments security and the implementation of appropriate technical support.

The Challenge of Remote Payments
Security and data protection have always been top priorities for financial services, but in order to succeed in today's environment, payments companies must first understand the unique challenges that a remote workforce presents. Only then will they be able to design an appropriate response while also ensuring that they are meeting both customer expectations and government regulations.

There are two major concerns: maintaining adequate data center capabilities to support a distributed workforce and ensuring customer data is secure at all times and in all locations within the financial platform. The former is a capacity issue, whereas the latter is a security concern. Fortunately, with the right technology deployment, both can be addressed.

The Cloud’s Role in Payments Security
The financial sector touches millions of data points, whether processing transactions or handling people's personal accounts, and all of these must be securely stored. Companies must invest in some kind of storage system to accommodate this volume of activity. Companies can either invest in on-premise data servers, which necessitates the construction of larger server farms to scale, or they can opt for cloud infrastructure.
While physical servers allow a company to have direct ownership and control over its data, their capacity is much more limited. Syncing to this hardware and maintaining a consistent, secure connection can be difficult, particularly in the age of remote work.

Cloud computing is not limited in this way, and it can rapidly scale to support whatever volume the user requires. Companies can access a cloud network to upgrade or downgrade their capacity as needed without causing significant disruption to operations or incurring excessive costs. If employees are dispersed, a cloud infrastructure can provide fast and secure network connectivity without requiring local data centers.

Organizations that use cloud technology can benefit from the security features and support provided by a much larger organization. While some businesses may be concerned about the security of a public network, due to the additional support, it can be far safer to store data here than on privately owned servers.

Machine Learning for Remote Payments Security
Despite this added layer of security, the best online payment gateway companies must still implement their own security measures within the cloud network, especially if their customer data is being routed through multiple remote computer locations. Encryption should be the first port of call to ensure that data is protected from cybercriminal activity even if a network point is compromised.

The next step should be to implement technology that can improve the authentication process without requiring employees to perform too many manual tasks. When such large amounts of data are passing through multiple entry points, it may appear impossible to obtain a unified picture of digital payment activity. How can the verification process be automated if there is no single comprehensive overview? The solution is to use cloud-based machine learning (ML).

Once a company has a cloud network in place, all of its data is automatically sent to the same ecosystem to be stored, analyzed, and processed. Because the data isn't spread across multiple servers, it's already ready to be fed into a machine learning algorithm — with no need for manual intervention. This machine learning technology can examine each individual transaction and detect patterns, making it far more accurate than a human reviewing a sample of data.

These patterns are then used to identify red flags for fraud, at which point the activity in question is routed to a human employee for review. Companies can free up resources while also streamlining the consumer experience by ensuring that only risky activity is assessed; fewer reviews on the back end means higher approval rates on the front end. This reduces disruption while maintaining the quality of fraud prevention.

Making Remote Security a Reality
Many financial institutions' operations have changed. Workforces are distributed, and payments are digitized, traveling across a plethora of network points rather than a few physical servers. However, this does not have to imply a reduction in service or security. With the right cloud technology in place, FIs can not only ensure consistent connectivity but also improve overall performance.

As you can scale capabilities as needed, you never have to worry about a system overload — or overpay for storage. Machine learning can then be used to improve fraud detection without depleting resources. High-quality, secure remote payments do not have to be a distant possibility.