By Libesh Babu, associate VP at Federal Bank, said hybrid cloud allows the bank to leverage the scalability and cost-effectiveness of public clouds while maintaining control over sensitive data in private clouds.
The bank currently utilize multiple public cloud platforms including Microsoft Azure, OCI (Oracle), AWS (Amazon) and GCP (Google), integrated with on-premise Kubernetes environments.
Federal Bank was also an early adopter of GenAI, their AI assistant ‘Faddy’ uses natural language processing to provide conversational responses in multiple languages.
Making security more complex
As companies across India increasingly embrace hybrid cloud platforms, like Federal bank did, their data becomes more dispersed, making security more complex, said Tushar Haralkar, IBM’s principal pre-sales country leader for security software. “With data spread across on-premise and cloud environments, visibility is critical.”
To address these challenges, IBM’s security model incorporates real-time monitoring and strict encryption protocols to protect data “at rest, in use, and in transit.” Such measures help mitigate common security issues like ransomware, ensuring that even if data is intercepted, it remains unusable without the bank’s encryption keys.
Gen AI itself also requires protection, added Haralkar, cautioning that AI models can be tampered with, leading to deep fake or “hallucination” attacks that pose real-world risks, particularly in sectors like healthcare and finance.
Identity management has also become a crucial point of security, it’s why you have so many passwords and keycards just to log into work. Mahen Gawade, business head of IAM at Inspire Enterprise India, noted that hackers don’t break in anymore-they log in.
Managing identities across systems has become essential as identities have become the new perimeter. With social engineering attacks and phishing on the rise, Gawade advocates for strict controls over identity verification.
“We need to provide users with identity control while using AI to assess threats. Identity solutions that adapt to behaviour patterns are vital to minimizing risks in a hybrid cloud,” he said.
patterns and behaviors over time
Imagine a smartphone that starts recognizing your unique patterns and behaviors over time. For instance, it notices that you usually unlock your phone and check your messages around the same time each morning, or that you have a specific way of holding and typing on your phone. An identity solution based on behavior patterns would use this information to adapt its security checks to you specifically.
Gawade also highlighted Inspira’s focus on decentralised identity solutions, where users can manage their own digital identities. “By using decentralised identities, we give users more control. Imagine walking into a bank or job interview with verified digital credentials instead of physical documents-this is the future of identity in hybrid environments,” he explained.
Advancements demand
As India’s digital economy continues to expand, the fusion of hybrid cloud and Gen AI will undoubtedly create new opportunities for businesses across sectors. However, the experts say that these advancements demand a reassessment of traditional security models.
