Architecting the Workplace Revolution

Banking Frontiers organized a panel discussion of technology and cybersecurity experts to discuss how the cyber workplace is evolving and how to make it more secure. Participants were Deepak Sarda, GM-IT at Indian Bank, Ratan Kumar, GM at Central Bank of India, KM Reddy, CISO at Union Bank of India, Babitha BP, CISO at CSB Bank and Prajit Nair, Director Sales - End-User Computing at VMware. Manoj Agrawal, Group Editor at Banking Frontiers, moderated the discussion.

Babita BP finds that networks and endpoints sometimes get overloaded while running tools and applications

Manoj: What major issues faced by the employees have been eliminated or automated?

Babitha: Due to the pandemic, the focus shifted to automation of the processes. Initially, only few tech-savvy employees worked from home. After one year, more employees have been upskilled.

Ratan Kumar: The branches were working with 50% capacity. But the backend was fully equipped to work from home. Employees faced many glitches and disruptions initially. We are in the process of redesigning our websites, call center workings and digital products.

Deepak: The biggest change was the use of technology for major decision-making. We have ramped up our IT support. Some applications which were allowed only to be used on the intranet are allowed on home PCs now. It is difficult to replicate the physical branch banking for public sector banks.

Ratan Kumar observes that during the lockdown, the branches were working with 50% capacity, but the backend was fully equipped to work from home

Manoj: What kind of support did you take from outside service providers to mitigate the issues?

Reddy: During the first lockdown the challenges ranged from scarcity of hardware to disruption in business continuity to security of the devices. This time the challenge is coming from employees getting infected and managing to keep the business running. To handle unpredictable situations, we are collaborating with vendors to provide IT solutions. With only 15% physical presence, we are able to manage 100% of business.

Manoj: What kind of requests and queries have you been receiving from BFSI companies?