Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 09 | Page 67

INDUSTRY WATCH: BANKING AND FINANCE Screenshots showing the user-friendly interface of the SawaPay app ground in Kenya. They understand African circumstances and solutions, such as M-Pesa. We can discuss our growth strategy with them face-to- face over a table. And, with their reach and credibility they can accelerate our expansion into different countries.” This ability to meet with their provider was important to FCG; as a start-up company, Osoro says the company benefits from the convenience of a local provider for easy access to support and staff training. During a one-month test period Dimension Data was also able to assure FCG of their capabilities through webinars and by carrying out a number of tests to ensure their solutions could guarantee them the high availability and infrastructure security required. Following the test period, Dimension Data was able to quickly get FCG up and running, as Business Development Manager for Kenya, Eric Mwirigi explains: “We’re not the world’s largest cloud provider, but we have the largest footprint, in terms of having data centres in most regions around the world. www.intelligentcio.com So, without having to adjust our fully automated and orchestrated platform and support services in any way, we were able to get FCG up and running in only three days and will be able to mature and scale their offering effortlessly.” Ensuring security and continuity Another vital part of the success of SawaPay was implementing tight security controls to protect personal data and to ensure customers can always access their services. Osoro says, “We take our user’s data security seriously so we have implemented various security solutions within our mobile app and the complementing infrastructure that the application runs on.” These solutions include data encryption, strong firewalls and secured VPNs as well as ongoing processes such as regular backups, security patches for servers and applications, staff cybersecurity training and an elaborate risk programme. For user security, the mobile app features two-factor authentication and utilises OAuth 2.0 which reduces the potential for attackers to perform ‘man in the middle’ attacks. The company also implement PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) and enforce limited permissions for access to the most necessary components required for the app to function correctly. One of the driving forces behind creating the app was to bring convenience, ease and availability of money remittance to Africa’s diaspora and a business continuity plan is a crucial part of delivering this service. Through Dimension Data’s cloud services, FCG have in place a continuity plan that relies upon redundant servers in Dimension Data’s North America data centre which provides automated load balancing, failover and data backups. Regional challenges Osoro points out that implementing such a solution doesn’t come without its difficulties and the most challenging of these is having to adhere to various financial regulatory authorities with INTELLIGENTCIO 67