Article in GAZETA BANKOWA ‘Cloud Platform for the Financial Sector – solutions for the most demanding Clients’

Talex Cloud for Financial Industry is a platform that responds to the challenges and needs of financial institutions that result from market pressure to provide high-tech services while maintaining reliability and safety standards, including those arising directly from the requirements set by regulators.

Polish banks are intensively preparing to migrate their IT processes to the cloud. Until recently, the lack of appropriate regulations was a barrier. At present, the most important step is to build a comprehensive offer by IT companies. Talex Cloud for Financial Industry is the answer to this need – it provides on-demand configurable computing resources such as servers or storage, as well as complete business services and applications, but also traditional Data Center services – hosting or collocation.

Two secure Data Centers

The basis of the platform are two independent Data Centers in Poznań and Wrocław owned by Talex, equipped with the most modern technological solutions.

Both centers meet the stringent requirements of the EN 50600 standards adopted in the EU Member States for equipment and infrastructure of data processing centers. The independent audit confirmed that Talex Data Center is the only one in Poland to meet the requirements at the highest level in all areas covered by the standards, i.e. “availability, physical security and energy efficiency.”

The Platform elements are duplicated in both Data Centers and environments are merged and run in such a way as to create a single entity, which allows for an effective response in the event of unforeseen events, while a high level of service, especially the critical ones.

Management system of IT services

Effective management of IT services is crucial for the operation of the platform. The processes used by Talex have been developed in the course of over 30 years of providing services to the Clients from the financial sector. These processes are fully compliant with the international standard ISO 20000, which defines the criteria of IT service management. The ISO/IEC 20000-1 certificate of compliance granted to the company includes: removal of hardware and software failure services, management of user requests (Help Desk), Data Center services, including: hosting, collocation, Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service and Software as a Service.

An integral part of the services offered by the Cloud Platform are the contact services with platform clients. The Customer Contact Center launched at Talex SA is certified for compliance with ISO 18295 standard and includes: Contact Center services in the area of incident registration and management in the area of supported IT technologies, Help Desk services for external and internal customers.

Data security

The platform meets the requirements of Recommendation D issued by the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (KNF) and its latest guidelines dated 23 January 2020 concerning the processing of information by supervised entities in a public or hybrid cloud, and in particular the requirements for cloud service providers.

Talex SA pays particular attention to ensuring security of data processed and stored in a cloud. The platform guarantees the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information in accordance with the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation [RODO].

The implemented information security management system has been certified as meeting the requirements of ISO 27001 standard for: design, manufacture, supply and integration of IT solutions and Data Center Services in the IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, web hosting and co-location model.

Green Data Centers

The intensive development of the Data Center market is connected with the growing energy consumption in this sector. Talex Data Centers, which are a key element of the platform, belong to the so-called green data centers. They were designed using the latest energy-saving technologies including, among others, chillers using atmospheric air (free cooling technology) or separation of cold and hot zones in server rooms (hot and cold aisle containment technology). The services offered by the Platform are carried out using ICT equipment with low energy consumption.

Cyber service insurance

Financial institutions providing services over the Internet are at risk of all kinds of cyber attacks. Despite growing awareness of cyber threats and investments in the security of IT systems, the number and scale of incidents is constantly growing. The most advanced solutions are not able to ensure 100% security.

Talex Cloud platform is covered by the unique on the Polish market cyber insurance policy. It protects the company and its customers against the effects of cyber-attacks, e.g. resulting from a violation of privacy regulations, against costs related to the recovery of destroyed/damaged data, against costs related to cyber extortion, as well as possible administrative penalties and damages.

Quality Management System

Talex Cloud for Financial Industry is already used by the first customers. The company’s efforts are aimed at improving methods and modes of operation concerning the processes of creating and supervising the services provided, which translates into constant efforts to improve their quality. The Quality Management System implemented in Talex according to the international standard ISO 9001 confirms the ability to provide services that meet the expectations of customers and legal regulators.