This Financial Insights report examines the growing need for analytics-based solutions in financial institutions to help augment security systems. The need for more effective risk management systems and fraud detection is growing more pressing for financial institutions. Highly publicized cases of internal frauds in major banks, online security breaches, and data theft reports are growing in number, threatening the reputation of stability of these financial institutions.

Abhishek Kumar, senior research analyst, Asia/Pacific Risk Management Advisory Service, notes, "The benefits of analytics applications are numerous. Not only does this strengthen the overall security system through the addition of advanced monitoring in the back end, but these analyses can also be used by the business departments for other purposes such as customer relationship management." Kumar stresses the need for financial institutions to first map out and understand the layout of their internal data landscape and data flows in order to determine the necessary data feeds for the analytics system.

Kumar concludes, "Analytics applications should not be construed as silver bullet solutions nor should they be seen as a replacement for conventional security systems. Instead, analytics augment the current security solutions in place and result in a true end-to-end security system when properly implemented."