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Introduction
Information is a key asset in any organization. The security to such information in terms of governance and access should be give utmost attention as it determines how, who and when to access such information, who can modify it and to what degree of access each part has.
The banking industry holds a lot of information with customers. A universal requirement for anyone to open a bank account is legal identification document which is used as the master source to identify the individual. Customer information held by a bank at any time will include contact details, physical location & address, account balances, transacting and transacting parties. Such information is vital and should be treated with confidentiality and integrity.
The Bank of America (BOA) has been in existence since 1956 when its predecessor, the Massachusetts Bank merged with NationsBank. As at of 2021, the bank was the second largest in the United States and the eighth largest globally. Currently, the bank holds wide customer base which then translates to large volumes of customer data. As the bank has been collecting customer information since it was established, most of this information has been stored in hard copy formats in cabinets across its branches. Data relating to customer account and transaction is stored in relational databases, which though is more secure, issues such as duplication and real-time retrieval and Question Assignmenting have been persistent. This to some extend is caused by the very large sets of data held by the bank from where Question Assignmenting is done.
Challenges with Information Governance
Information governance within the bank hasn’t been the best due to lack of good administration and policies addressing handling of the data. Some identified challenges relating to information governance which will need to be addressed include the following.
Information management entails retrieval, acquisition, security, and maintenance of information, both hard copy and in electronic formats within an organization (Tallon et al., 2014). The bank has volumes of information on both formats. While initial customer information such as account opening forms are in hard copy, information about transactions and account status is stored in tables within the bank master database. Information management automation will be needed to address the challenge of information management.
Regulatory compliance revolves around the various measures and guidelines issues by governments (both state and federal) to about information held by the bank. While some compliance measures and guidelines are universal- apply across different territories and countries, others only apply to selected locations (Tallon et al., 2014). This includes how long the bank should keep customer information, what kind of information to collect from customers and mode of sharing such information. Currently the bank lacks a comprehensive way of ensuring compliance to the regulatory guidelines relating to information held. An information governance software to automatically store electronic records required by the regulations will be needed.
Defensible disposition of information will include doing away with information retained by the bank but has no obvious business value and could be done away with without legal, regulatory, or business consequences. According to a survey by The Compliance, Governance and Oversight Counsel (CGOC) in 2012, this represented 69% of organization’s data (Jan, 2014). This therefore means there is need for the bank to do a data clean up, understanding what irrelevant information is still being help in cabinets and electronic storage.
References
Jan, Lambrechts (2014). Information Lifecycle Governance (ILG) Maximize data value, reduce data growth, cost and risk. Australian Journal of Telecommunications and the Digital Economy.
Tallon, P., Ramirez, R. & Shor, J. (2014). The Information Artifact in IT Governance: Toward a Theory of Information Governance. Journal of Management Information Systems. 30
https://www.bankofamerica.com/
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1
Introduction
In any organization, information is a valuable asset. The security of such information in terms of governance and access should be given the utmost attention because it dictates how, who, and when such information may be accessed, who can modify it, and to what degree each part has access.
Customers have a lot of information in the banking industry. A legal identity document, which is used as the primary source to identify the individual, is a universal requirement for anyone opening a bank account. A bank’s customer information will contain contact information, physical location and address, account balances, transacting and transacting parties at any time. Such information is critical and must be handled with discretion and integrity.
Bank of America (BOA) is a financial institution.
