The Database: Meeting Regulatory Compliance In Finance

As automation speeds up database development and reduces costly downtime, strict database regulatory compliance in finance is preventing organizations in this sector from adopting these practices.With the recent fast-paced wave of regulation, financial institutions need a tool that helps them achieve compliance and combat regulatory constraints.

Challenges Presented by Strict Regulatory Compliance 

The task of managing many ongoing projects, coupled with the need to continuously amend and improve systems for meeting reporting requirements, serves as an obstacle for financial institutions in implementing continuous processes for the database. 

Financial institutions are wary of automation because of the inability to determine who made what changes to the database. Not only that, the possibility of version control scripts not being updated can result in executing the wrong revision in production, creating bugs or application crashes.

In addition keeping databases regulatory compliant in finance is understandably complex and always changing, and automation could make the database vulnerable to security breaches. 

DevOps for Database is the Solution

Financial institutions implementing modern, effective DevOps for database practices find that it’s possible to implement continuous delivery and enable true database automation. Belive it or not, these proccesses mitigate the risk of human error while simultaneously speeding development cycles.

The end result is less downtime, fewer errors, and a reduction in development costs – while enabling financial institutions to leverage technology to meet database regulatory compliance requirements.

Keys to Database-Enabled Regulatory Compliance In Finance

Financial institutions successfully navigate these challenges, balancing the need for innovation, fast-paced development, and risk management with regulatory compliance by implementing DevOps for database solutions, which provide several key competencies:

• Proper database version control for structure, code, and content while enforcing a single work process to prevent out of process changes, code overrides, and incomplete updates.
• Leveraging proven version control best practices, such as check-in, check-out functionality to document complete information for regulatory reporting, including who made changes to a database object, what changes were made, and when and why the changes were introduced.
  This results in a complete, reliable audit trail while minimizing manual documentation requirements for developers, meeting one of the demands for database regulatory compliance in finance.
• Reliable impact analysis for deployment generators, relying on baseline-aware analysis (not simple compare-and-sync), offering the ability to deal with conflicts and merges of the database code – even cross-updates from dispersed teams – and also dealing with out-of-process changes and ignoring wrong code overrides.
• Defined access levels (down to individual objects and data), which completely prevent unauthorized changes to the database, maintaining the quality and integrity of the database and associated data while still enabling complete and functional access for every team member on-demand.

Benefits of DevOps for the Database for Financial Institutions 

The growing demand for 24/7 access to personal financial information and financial services has put the traditional financial institutions on the hot seat.

As startups are offering consumers non-traditional choices, large financial institutions must innovate in order to remain competitive. As the smaller companies manage to innovate and iterate without sacrificing compliance, the larger institutions are being pressured to following suit.

DevOps for database solutions solve the key challenges in order to meet regulatory compliance in finance. Such solutions allow institutions to implement rapid development and release cycles, all while avoiding the perceived risks of automation, reducing development costs, and boosting ROI. 

This allows for financial institutions to accomplish the following:

• Meet the increased demand for faster time-to-market applications.
• Manage the development of multiple applications on a day-to-day basis.
• Reduce costly errors that result in downtime.
• Streamline the application delivery processes while minimizing development costs.
• Meet the demands of ever-changing regulations.

Why Isn't Everyone on Board?

Unfortunately, automation still carries risks, especially when dealing with very sensitive information on a daily basis. On the other hand, the devastating costs of unplanned downtime that comes with a wholly manual process may justify a hedged approach to the risks associated. Otherwise, the monetary costs, as well as negative publicity, might be too much for the organization to handle. 

DevOps for the database offers a solution to meet regulatory compliance in the financial industry. But it's important to remember that implementing DevOps is not a quick fix. It requires a CTO willing to take risks, development and operations willing and able to break hierarchy and work together, and DBAs that can handle the heavy workload.

While DevOps for the database provides a solution that effectively mitigates the risks of costly errors and speeds up development, mishandling DevOps can be a nightmare. It is for this reasons that sometimes database-enabled regulatory compliance in finance can seem a frightful proposition.

Organizations that embrace DevOps for the database will not regret doing so, as they'll gain the tools and capabilities that enable true and safe continuous delivery for the database (while keeping up with consumer demands). On the flip side of the coin are those companies are governed by their fears. Those companies that will be left behind.