Considerations of Emerging Cloud Computing in Financial Industry and One-Time Password with Valet Key Solution

The services provided by the modern financial industry can date back to hundreds of years ago, which encompass a wide range of businesses that relevant to money, including banks, insurances, stock brokerages, investment funds. The evolving cloud computing and big data technologies have brought big wave to the old economic activities. When the most conservative economic services come across the emerging cloud computing technology, there are both opportunities and challenges. This research is for those who concerned cloud computing security, considerations and solutions of the financial industry or for those limited cloud-acceptance organizations. We propose a design called "Hybrid Cloud Architecture with OTP Valet Key Protection" based on the mixed deployment model to get a proper balance in between of the security concerns and the merits brought by the cloud computing. By keeping the data stored encrypted, cloud providers are prevented from peeking at the data content, validated users must acquire an extra valet key token after one-time password authentication to do any data access operations. This token is time-limited and even geo-limited per custom policy. The entire token controlling procedure is under the financial administrator's arbitrations on the ground. The proposed scheme much eliminates the concern with data leakage while enhancing the whole system elasticity and scalability with cloud computing. Through the case study, it enables re-considering the possibility of leveraging cloud paradigm even for the most conservative financial institutions.