Facts at a glance
- Product: Customer-owned bank
- Industry: Banking
- Country: Australia
“With Experteq, the reporting that we can now produce when it comes to our information security is a world away from what we were doing before. That makes it easier for the board to have confidence that we’re doing what we need to do, to protect our members.” – Vivien Allen, Geelong Bank CEO.
About the company
Geelong Bank (formerly known as Ford Co-operative Credit Society Limited, or FCCS) was established in 1974 by a dedicated group of 80 employees of the Ford Motor Company, to provide financial services to Geelong Ford employees and their families.
Since its inception, the customer-owned bank has always focused on providing real value to its customers rather than pursuing big profits. In 2018, FCCS changed its name to Geelong Bank and today, the forward-looking bank continues to move with the times, remaining relevant among the next generation of customers.
Background
As a bank focused on its customers, the security of their information and data has always been a top priority. However, in 2019 with the introduction of an update to APRA’s CPS 234 regulation in response to the ongoing cyberthreats faced by Australia’s financial sector, the bank knew that it had to act quickly.
Until then, the bank had housed all its servers on-site, and subcontracted a general IT business for IT support and maintenance. The bank only had one employee who managed its IT, with very little backup. But, the bank needed to comply with CPS 234, and the game had changed – the bank needed to restructure how it managed its IT infrastructure to reduce the risk of any security breaches.
Experteq ticked all the boxes and removed several pain points.
Challenges:
- Protecting customers’ information and data, including complying with APRA’s CPS 234 regulation
- Reliable and robust solution needed to ensure zero customer impact
- With lockdowns and a hybrid workforce spread across multiple locations, getting all teams onboard to identify and resolve issues required proactive change management and communication
Benefits
- Supporting seamless operations, Experteq handled all patching and software upgrades, whilst ensuring the bank met regulatory requirements
- Freed up bank staff to focus on value-creating tasks, rather than spending time on non-core businesses areas
- Secured infrastructure and allowed fast-tracking of digital journey, especially during lockdowns
Why Experteq?
Since 1989, Experteq has built a reputation for delivering outstanding business outcomes. Our end-to-end cloud services are delivered through our four pillars of expertise: infrastructure, network, productivity and security solutions. With our reputation for security, excellence and speed as the trusted technology partner to over 40% of Tier 2 and 3 financial and government institutions, we were the natural choice to support Geelong Bank in a successful migration of their core database with zero customer impact.
