Digitalisation has created new needs for digital assets protection. Who better to step up than financial service providers?
For centuries, banks have been the caretakers of physical assets. Now, digitalisation has created a novel need for the protection of digital assets, such as personal data. Banks and other financial service providers are in a clear, strong position to provide their clients with a convenient place to keep these assets safe. Due to their extraordinarily strict safety mechanisms and superior privacy protection policies, they make for a natural choice when clients are looking for a safe place to store important files and passwords.
Time to take a stand for digital asset ownership
Zurich-based DSwiss was founded in 2008 with the goal of strengthening a fairly new and unguarded form of ownership; that of digital assets. We believe that data is the most valuable asset of the 21st Century and that it should be protected accordingly. The security and privacy of data are constantly under threat from hackers, competitors and even natural disasters such as fire or earthquakes.
Furthermore, lack of transparency makes it near impossible for consumers to follow how, when and why their data is being used, sold or passed between businesses or even governmental institutions. We believe that financial service providers – with their long-lasting tradition as custodians of valuables – have a unique chance to play a key role in helping people and businesses safeguard and manage their data.
Privacy protection as competitive advantage
Consider what makes financial service providers unique in today’s data-driven market. They know their clients exceedingly well. Through account statements, they get front-row insights into clients’ everyday lives, investments and whereabouts. This fact puts them in a unique competitive situation, rivalled only by a few large, digital players.
Unlike companies from many other fields of business, financial service providers have a strong affinity to confidentiality, integrity and accessibility of their systems and data. Furthermore, banks are heavily regulated and hence they have highly controlled process systems. Therefore, they can provide something that the digital players cannot: a promise to keep important personal data safe.
The traditional bank vault goes digital
As an answer to recent challenges to digital privacy, DSwiss AG has developed a highly secure digital safe, which can be seen as a digital counterpart to the traditional bank safe. Banks such as UBS and Deutsche Bank have already integrated a white-label version of our safe directly in the heart of their e-banking services.
With this solution, financial service providers can clearly position themselves as digital front-runners. They enable their clients to safe-keep and manage important personal digital assets. These include copies of:
- Identity papers;
- Contracts;
- Insurance policies;
- Passwords;
- Treasured image collections; and
- Many other secure assets.
With DSwiss’ innovative solution, financial service providers can offer this security with a long-term perspective: a client that can reliably gather all of his or her essential data in a personal, digital safe is more likely to stay loyal.
More than just storage
Digitisation of safekeeping opens up many more possibilities than simple storage. From within their digital safe, clients must feel enabled to interact with their bank and solve asset management-related tasks in a simpler and safer way than before. In addition to the safe, DSwiss offers electronic inboxes that can be integrated directly into the safe, so that banks can deliver bank statements, yearly reports and the like directly to their clients in a paper-free, cost-efficient and legally compliant manner.
Furthermore, the digital safe can be used as a basis for interactions between clients and advisors in all things related to asset management. On the one hand, advisors can make interactive forms available to their clients directly from their safe. On the other hand, clients can choose the certain documents that they need to share with their advisors, for example to obtain a loan or mortgage.
Legally anchored digital mailboxes
Digital mailboxes do not just represent an easy, paperless way to transfer bank documents to end clients. They are also legally anchored and compliant with prerequisites as put forth by the European Court of Justice (EuGH). In January 2017, the EuGH clearly defined new criteria for such mailboxes as follows: “An electronic mailbox meets the requirements to a permanent data carrier if it is ensured that information personally targeted at the payment service user can be saved in a manner in which he will be able to subsequently use them for an appropriate duration of time and so that unchanged reproduction is possible.”
DSwiss offers an electronic mailbox module, which is readily integrated in our digital safe solution. In contrast to conventional e-banking solutions, documents are delivered into a digital mailbox that only the client can manage and view. Once delivered, the documents cannot be changed and are in the full ownership of the end-client.
In addition to the statutory advantages, digital delivery of bank documents is also an environmentally friendly and sustainable way of saving costs.
In tune with EU regulations
On May 28, 2018, the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) becomes effective. The new data protection directive applies to all companies that manage the data of EU citizens. Amongst other important themes, privacy protection is put into focus and given clear priority. For example, the standard settings of digital applications should be as private and privacy friendly as possible. With the digital safe, a high level of privacy is a given. Financial service providers can use the digital safe as a way to show their commitment to the direction set out by EU in the new regulations.
White label integration in existing e-banking solutions
Our digital safes can be seamlessly integrated in any existing e-banking solution, and can include a complete adaptation of colours and logos to easily fit existing branding. This ensures an efficient time-to-market for a digital safe that can be offered to end clients as a part of a larger digitisation strategy.
We have many years of experience in the implementation of complex IT projects and can support our clients from planning, to implementation and beyond. DSwiss operates a dedicated server infrastructure, thanks to which our clients can choose if the safes are to be installed on our high security servers in Switzerland, or on their company’s network on premises.
Zero-knowledge ensures unique privacy protection
DSwiss’ data safe has been constructed so that no one but the owner of a safe – not even the company’s own programmers – is able to access the data saved within it. This approach is also known as ‘zero knowledge’, because we, as a service provider, completely respect the privacy of the end clients. Generally, data privacy protection is our number one priority, with numerous security mechanisms directly incorporated into the architecture of our applications. In this way, users can rest assured that personal data will be protected at all times.
High-end security only
DSwiss ensures data security by employing internationally renowned encryption methods, triple data backup and strong user authentication. Specifically, we use AES-256 and RSA-2048 encryption standards, which have been designed to offer long-term protection. Moreover, we employ highly safe and globally accepted procedures to encrypt all customer data. The keys required for encryption are calculated directly from the customer’s password. This offers a superior level of protections from malicious hackers.
Furthermore, all information saved is encrypted with a multiple-level crypto-architecture at DSwiss. Our security architecture has been made openly available with multiple testing by third parties, including international banks.
Learn more about DSwiss and our offers at: www.dswiss.com
