Securing UK Companies for the Future

Enterprises around the world are constantly under pressure to protect their business, employee, and customer data. In the UK this is especially true, with the nation’s growing concerns around Brexit, and the handling and use of personal data. As a result, many enterprises are asking themselves, “how can we adapt and innovate while balancing security and regulation?”

Often, there is a misguided belief that this balance isn’t possible. But security isn’t a trade-off; it’s a means of protection and innovation, often a measure of quality in and of itself. Only when enterprises change their way of thinking about security can they begin to extract this dual value and implement it into their way of working.

To achieve this change of perception, UK enterprises need to understand that security isn’t the role of technology alone, but even more so it is the responsibility of the people in the enterprise. Moreover, security should be so much more than a duty, it should be a culture - promoted and celebrated by everyone. This way, security is an enabler, not a hindrance.

In the UK’s Financial Services industry, Monzo is one AWS customer who is leading the way. In less than five years it’s gone from a disruptive idea to a fully regulated bank that has (so far) handled more than £1billion worth of transactions for more than 2 million customers.

The bank’s success is thanks in no small part to its technical decisions, such as running its core banking services in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud and opting for a microservices architecture. It’s also using separate AWS accounts which isolates different parts of their infrastructure and data, reducing the blast radius of failures or account compromise. This means that critical parts of the infrastructure remain unaffected. Many argue that their lack of technical debt has enabled this, but it’s much more than that. Their approach to technology and to security – for example, creating a culture of security, has played a role too.

This has enabled Monzo to enter what used to be an impenetrable market, offering an innovative and exciting new option for customers. Traditional banking has been shaken up, creating an exciting and dynamic new environment for end customers.

If Monzo proves anything, it’s that security and innovation do not work against one another, but together. To gain a better understanding of this philosophy, download the ebook “Creating a Culture of Security”, where my colleague, Mark Schwartz, discusses what it means to have a culture of security and how it could make all the difference to your business. When it comes to nurturing a culture of security, the UK’s start-up ecosystem is leading the way. We believe mature enterprises can achieve this too. Even those who feel tied down by their legacy systems can have the capability to react to our changing world.