The Department of the Treasury and the Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council, or FSSCC, have released a set of new resources meant to help financial service institutions implement effective practices to advance the secure adoption of cloud services.
The documents mark the continuing joint effort to address the gaps cited in the Treasury’s report on the financial sector’s cloud services adoption, the department said Wednesday.
Those gaps include the establishment of a common lexicon that could be used by financial regulators and institutions in cloud-related discussions, enhancement of information-sharing and coordination for examining cloud service providers and the assessment of existing authorities for CSP oversight.
Launched by the Treasury in May 2023, the Cloud Executive Steering Group published the documents, which were developed through a public-private partnership between FSSCC and the Financial and Banking Information Infrastructure Committee, or FBIIC.
“The completion of these two efforts is the culmination of nearly two years of collaboration to further protect our financial system,” said Wally Adeyemo, deputy secretary of the Treasury. “The CESG is now a proven model and a new way for the financial services sector to effectively address our most significant cybersecurity challenges.”
FSSCC-led deliverables include the Cloud Profile 2.0, the Financial Sector Cloud Outsourcing Issues and Considerations document and the Transparency and Monitoring for Better “Secure-by-Design” document.
FBIIC-led workstreams include the Cloud Lexicon and the Coordinated Information Sharing and Examinations Initiative.
“Our financial system is essential infrastructure for the entire economy, and it is deeply reliant on a handful of powerful Big Tech cloud service providers,” said Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra. “Our work will help protect the financial industry from outages and disruption by leveling the playing field between financial firms of all sizes and big cloud service providers.”