Companies in the financial sector are linked (to a greater or lesser extent depending on the country), through technology, enabling an intense exchange of information, as well as serving their clients in a fast, secure and often customized way.

Technological innovations enable the development of new products and services to win more and more customers. Such innovations are mostly driven and disciplined by industry regulations and over time and have enabled capabilities such as:

• Electronic access to the bank account;
• Transfer of funds between accounts;
• Payment and electronic presentation of accounts;
• Payment instructions between merchants, banks and customers;
• Micropayments using electronic money.

In the case of the Brazilian Payment System (SPB), for example, the Brazilian Central Bank sought to reduce risks in the financial system and, among other measures, defined a structure that interconnects several institutions allowing real-time transactions: payments, balances, applications among several others.

These online capabilities require the data to be stored or in transit (transactions) and have their authorship, integrity and secrecy guaranteed. Therefore, each innovation requires changes in processes and new protections in Information Technology and Communications systems.

Encryption and digital certification are at the heart of any data protection strategy. Protecting the security keys used to encrypt or digitally sign information is critical to ensuring the reliability of an entire ecosystem. The compromise of a key can invalidate the entire security infrastructure, no matter how expensive or sophisticated it may be.

All financial operations involving security keys must occur in a highly secure environment – equipment such as servers are designed for general use and do not provide the necessary protection – in addition, cryptographic operations require a large processing power and can consume precious computing resources competing with rules of business.

• The Hardware Security Module (HSM) is the most secure way to manage the entire key life cycle of an institution. DINAMO Networks has developed one of the best HSMs on the market with high performance, following international standards such as FIPS 140-2 and homologated by the Institute of Information Technology – an organization linked to the Civil House of the Presidency of the Republic that defines and controls all aspects technical and security related to the Brazilian Public Key Infrastructure (ICP-Brazil).
• DINAMO HSM is the best option for creating a centralized cryptographic services infrastructure.