Introduction to Commonwealth Bank of Australia
Information Technology (IT) has become a major factor of success for any organisation in the world. This report is based on the various kinds of changes based on IT, which are being made in the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA). The CBA is considered as one of the largest retail sector bank based in Australia. The banking sector is one of the largest and hence dominates the sector of retail deposits and home loans. The bank also has a strong base of business franchise in the segments of the retail market (Schlagwein, Thorogood and Willcocks 2014).
The CBA has majorly acquired the major status of a popular financial icon that has been evident with their huge success based on their success stories in the past. They have hence continued in the path of financial success and various kinds of innovation in the technology based on customer-centric (Osei-Kyei and Chan 2015). CBA is regarded as one of the largest repositories within the banking sector and hence has been widely accepted by the people of Australia. Hence the wide community of people hold ha high level of expectation from the institution.
- Passionate form of leadership in the world market.
- Rewards and Recognition that would be linked with the services and outcomes based on sales.
- High level of training of employees and mastery of the entire process of the organization.
- Clear form of expectations and effective measures of follow-up of the issues (Chileshe and John Kikwasi 2014).
- Retaining of lowest form of structure of cost.
- Expanding of customer share with the help of direct and online form of leadership.
- Implementation of best forms of management of people and resources.
- Providing of more kinds of financial services and meeting the expectations of the customer (Worthington 2016).
The CBA would require to maintain a high form of competitive structure of cost that would be meaningful for the growth of the customer base for a greater form of advantage. The use of internet based products and various kinds of services would be the major reason for the growth of the business. There is a high level of competitive pressure in the market from new kinds of entrants. Many of the strategic initiatives would be primarily focused on ensuring quality and hence they have retained the advantage of low unit of the structure of cost (Willcocks and Reynolds 2015).
A mission statement for the client business based within the context of CBA is – To provide high level of services to the customer and meet the requirements of the business.
(Fig 1: Organizational Chart of Commonwealth Bank of Australia)
The Current System of Commonwealth Bank of Australia
The CBA is a public based company and is listed within the Australian Securities Exchange. It is one of the largest form of multinational bank within Australia and they have their subsidiaries in United Kingdom, USA, Asia, Fiji and New Zealand. The bank is able to offer several forms of financial based services to different kinds of owners of business and various personal clients (Fenna 2013). The structure of the organization of CBA is integrated in a vertical manner and is thus able to operate in the form of a network based structure. The primary form of vision of the organization is to become one of the finest form of organizations based on financial services as they excel in high form of customer service and huge level of strategy (Murray et al. 2014). These forms of strategies are highly evaluated for recognizing various kinds of significant opportunities within the business objectives in order to develop much value for their people, stakeholders and customers.
Customer-Centric Approach and Innovations in Technology
With the rise in the technological aspects, the CBA has integrated Information Technology (IT) systems within the organizational prospects. The bank has integrated various kinds of IT related services in their daily operations as they are extremely cautious about the services provided to the customers (Oliveira et al. 2014). The CBA could be widely regarded as one of the advanced forms of banks, which are highly advanced in the aspects of technology. They have adopted huge technical changes within their systems, which are highly updated and are able to provide higher forms of customer service. They update their technical services and products on a daily basis. One of the most successful implementation of technology that have been made by the CBA include the implementation of the mobile banking systems for their customers (Abawajy 2014). This would be a major help for the organization and the customers as they would be able to access the website of the organization from their personal mobile devices.
According to Mr. Whitely, who is the executive general manager of the CBA it has been declared the mobile banking systems of the CBA could be regarded one of the secure form of access methods as compared to the computer based banking systems (Kenway 2018). With the help of the mobile banking systems, the banking sector would be able to easily track a person who would be making use of mobile systems. The mobile devices make use of SIM for the purpose of connecting with the bank. The present forms of the mobile version of banking within the web browser would be able to protect the customers from any kind of hacking systems. Hence it would add a high level of security for the customers whenever they would be availing the banking services from the CBA (Smith 2018).
With the rise of the mobile banking systems, the CBA would have to maintain the high form of security within the devices. Meeting the standards of authentication is one of the major problem, which is faced by the CBA. The banking systems of CBA follows some form of mechanisms based on the concerns of security within the mobile banking sector (Buckby, Gallery and Ma 2015). A customer who would like to avail the technology of mobile banking due to the huge purpose of mobility with which they would access the banking systems in any form of situation. With the help of the mobile banking systems provided by the CBA, the customers would be able to transfer money from one banking account to another in a user-friendly environment. They could also be able to check the current status of their account. There are some customers who would not wish to avail these kinds of high form of services due to a short level of trust on the banking (Salim, Arjomandi and Seufert 2016).
In the recent times, there have been major cases of forgery and hacks within the banking systems, which has led to lowering of trust in the mobile based banking forms. These customers are not ready to adopt such kinds of banking systems as it would bring inconvenience on the part of the users with the assumption that they would not be able to prevent any kinds of direct or indirect forms of attacks on the systems. The mechanism of security that are mainly adopted by the CBA mainly face different kinds of security issues such as being attacked by many kinds of unauthorized users. This is mainly regarded as the highest form of priority in the aspects of security (Brown and Davis 2015).
Mission Statement of Client Business
Another form of weakness that is faced by the CBA is that the banks mainly outsource their facilities from third party architecture. They mainly handle the customer service of mobile banking systems with the help of a third party service provider (Florina, Ludovica and Leonica 2013). They are thus responsible for secure form of transactions and management of the systems. This form of method is also responsible for mitigating the authentication issues. There is no such form of trust in the security of the data of the accounts of the customers that would include the details of the bank account, addresses of the customers, which would be managed by the third party service provider. Hence the customer would not be able to feel the security of sharing their personal passwords and other intrinsic details to the unknown third party. Some of the other kinds of issues that are majorly faced with the implementation of the services provided by the third party include network control and security, parental based controls, interoperability standardization, liability, prevention from frauds and authentication, privacy of customers and informed permission (Salim, Arjomandi and Seufert 2016).
(Fig 2: Data Flow Diagram of the Systems of Commonwealth Bank of Australia)
Primary Features of New Improved System
The mobile banking systems are regarded to be highly secured in the banking sector. Besides the normal forms of banking based services, the rise of mobile banking technologies are rising at a rapid pace. They are showing tremendous level of improvements but still they are facing various kinds of security threats within the systems at CBA (Devadevan 2013). Some of the improved features behind the security of the mobile banking systems include the use of biometrics, integration of PLS with the HLS standards and upgrade the mainframe systems to a UNIX and DB2.
With the help of providing of biometric method for the security of the devices, the CBA would be able to adopt extreme levels of trusts with the mobile banking systems. This would be able to ensure the trust within the systems of mobile banking (Lovelock and Patterson 2015). The method of adoption of biometrics within the mobile banking systems would be able to identify the physical behavior of any individual. The use of biometric method would be a useful method as the biometric details of a person are unique for every person. Hence it is extremely impossible for copying, sharing or forgetting of the passwords. This is due to the reason as each individual has their own personal identity. The use of biometric mechanism would be extremely important as it helps in the improvement of the levels of security within the banking systems of CBA (Bajada and Trayler 2015). There are various kinds of mechanisms for biometric recognition based on the methods of authentication. Each of the biological features of persons vary from one another. Hence, it could be suggestible that the biometric feature of authentication would be very much useful for authenticating the user. Some of the other features based on biometric authentication that could be included within the banking systems of CBA include hand based recognition, face recognition, fingerprint recognition and voice recognition. Various forms of research in the field of fingerprint recognition technology are being developed and newer kinds of sensors are being developed.
Mobile Banking Systems in Commonwealth Bank of Australia
The integration of PLS with HLS systems would also prove to be beneficial for the security of the systems. The user interface of the PLS is mainly operated on a non-supportable platform. In this kind of systems, the bank would normally have to enter the data based on the applications on the internet into the systems based on PLS for the purpose of producing the documentation of loan. Hence, in order to reduce the costs, optimize the level of functionality and improve the level of functionality, the CBA should be able to integrate these systems within their sector. With the integration of these systems within their sector, the CBA would be highly successful for exceling their levels of customer services with the help of their IT service providers. The infrastructure of IT within the CBA have a major history of success (Van Oosterzee, Dale and Preece 2014). Hence they would be able to implement much better forms of systems in order to provide better forms of customer service. The implementation of these forms of systems within the IT infrastructure would be helpful for making faster forms of decisions, funding, differentiation between greater form of products and thus reaping higher forms of approval rates.
The CBA has a higher form of IT based infrastructure based on IT systems. With the help of their IT partners, the CBA should upgrade their old mainframe systems that were based on the older versions of Windows OS to a much higher level based on DB2 and UNIX systems. With the upgrade of the systems to a completely different mainframe systems, it would be extremely vital for the IT systems and mobile banking sector to stay protected from several kinds of risks within the systems. The CBA would also be able to increase the level of efficiency within the organisation and also would be able to reduce the costs (Bott and Milkau 2014). The CBA systems should also implement automation systems within their organisation for the purpose of increasing the security levels, monitor over their existing IT systems, and enable higher speeds of processing that would be able to offer higher forms of speeds within the accessibility of the systems.
The implementation of the newer forms of systems could be classified under the EDI (Electronic Data Interchange). This systems is an electronic form of interchange based on the information related to a business organization. This system allow the IT systems of CBA for the processing of information using a standardized format. With the help of this process, the company would be able to send vital information to some other company in an electronic format. With the help of the EDI systems, the CBA banking systems would be able to reduce the risks of losing of sensitive information. This is due to the reason that with the effect of EDI systems, the data would be transferred to another sector in an electronic, secured format and a fast format. The use of EDI systems within the banking systems of CBA would be able to help the banking sector to avoid various kinds of data losses during the process of transit as the transmissions could be easily tracked and would be monitored in real time scenarios (Jain, Keneley and Thomson 2015).
The use of EDI systems within the latest design of the new information systems within the banking sector would be very much useful for supporting the efficiency within the workflow, streamlining of the various processes related to the transfer of documents, saving of a considerable amount of time, reduction of errors and also bringing in accuracy of improving of documents, which would enable the faster forms of business related transactions. The process of EDI is also much more cost-effective. Hence, the integration of the EDI systems within the new implemented systems of the banking sector of CBA (Mocker, Weill and Woerner 2014).
(Fig 2: E-R Diagram)
Mobile banking is a form of services that is provided by any financial institution or banking sector, which primarily allows their customers to conduct various forms of financial based transactions in a remote mobile device. The Commonwealth Bank of Australia also helps in providing such kinds of services to their customers. This system is mainly responsible bringing efficiency within the banking processes and services (Gill, Bunker and Seltsikas 2015). There are different kinds of technical platforms based on which the mobile banking systems would be able to function. Different kinds of platforms such as HTML5, CSS and Javascript have been majorly used for the development purposes and which have been the major base for the development of high kinds of systems. With the help of these technological platforms, different other kinds of banking systems have been previously defined and successfully developed.
The bank, bank branch and account are considered to be as the financial attributes of the organisation. The non-financial attributes of the organisation are loans, phone numbers, addresses of customers and bank branches assigned to the customers.
- Customer – They are the primary assets of the organization. They mainly build their accounts within the bank and thus mainly keep their assets.
- Account – The Accounts within the bank mainly maintain the proper maintenance of the different services within the bank. They also maintain the account balance and thus keep on updating the customers about the account details to the customers.
- Bank Branch – This section is responsible for holding the record details of the customers. They mainly store the records of the customers and thus designate the customers to the respective banks.
- Bank – The bank helps in storing the records of the customers. These perform several forms of functions such as stores the accounts of the customers and serves them with various services such as storing of their accounts, serve them with loans, assign the customers with bank branches and many others.
There are various kinds of potential security risks that could affect the banking systems of Commonwealth Bank of Australia. Some of the attacks on the systems of CBA include:
Trojan horse Attacks – These kinds of attacks within the banking system could help the attacker to invite a Trojan. This could be in the form of a key logger program based on the computer of the user. This would normally occur whenever the user would access certain websites and use some kinds of downloaded programs. While accessing the website or the downloaded programs, the key logger program would also get installed within the computing systems without the knowledge of the user (Bhunia et al. 2014). Whenever the user would log into the website of the bank, the information would be captured during the particular session and would be passed on to the attacker.
Malicious Hackers – These forms of malicious attacks within the systems of banking would refer to the break in to the computing systems without a proper form of authorization. These could be able to include the outside as well as the inside persons within the sector of banking. Hacking is a form of activity that has become much more prevalent in the recent times. Hence this has allowed for the purpose of accessing the website in a remote manner. Hackers are able to penetrate into the high technically protected systems with the help of various kinds of supporting equipment such as routers or switches. Hence this can entirely damage the network reliability.
Phishing attacks – With the huge rise in the storage of personal information of the customers who are linked with the banking sector, it has been a major form of responsibility for the security of the banking systems. Misuse of various kinds of personal information such as driving license, bank account numbers or social security numbers could lead to the conduct of stealing of various kinds of financial based transactions. The banking sectors have majorly felt the problem of phishing based attacks in their highly developed system, which is constantly being thought as a risk factor for the organizations and the services provided by the banking sector.
Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) Attacks – In these kinds of attacks that are faced by the banking systems, a fake website is created for the major purpose of gaining attention of a wide number of users who mainly access the particular kind of website. In this kind of attack on the system, the attacker is able to trick the user with the help of disguising an identity in order to take assure the user that the message was coming from a trusted source. On successful attempt of the attacker, the users would be redirected to the website of the attacker and hence all the private and confidential information of the user would be fully shared with the attacker. Hence the confidential information related to the banking related transactions would be shared with the attacker and hence they could be able to misuse with the information (Bicakci et al. 2014).
Data breaches are also a common form of activity within the banking systems. These can lead to tremendous form of impacts within the systems. These can lead to the loss of private and confidential data of the organisation. The information of the user would also be put at stake during such cases of data breaches within a particular organisation.
There are various kinds of accounting control systems and procedures, which could be followed for keeping a huge form of control over the private data within the banking sector.
Physical Audits – These kinds of audits within the internal system would refer to the protection and audit over the physical assets of the information systems within a banking organisation. Many of the larger projects within the banking sector would normally require a annual or quarterly basis audit over their systems (Jiménez, Lopez and Saurina 2013).
Approval Authority – There should be a proper form of requirement of specific form of managers who would be highly qualified for the purpose of detection of any kinds of frauds within the systems. These kinds of transactions would be able to add a separate layer of security over the transactions. A proper form of approval of larger kinds of payments and various kinds of expenses of the system would be essential for the prevention of such kind of unscrupulous activities that might be occurring over the systems (Goodhart et al. 2013).
Separation of Duties – The separation of various kinds of duties would involve the splitting of different kinds of responsibilities that are put together on the banking systems such as deposits, bookkeeping, auditing and reporting.
Access over Controls – There should be a proper form of control over the banking systems with the help of lockouts, passwords and electronic forms of logs, which would be helpful for keeping any form of unauthorized users from accessing the real system. A robust form of tracking of access would also be able to serve any form of fraudulent activities within the system (Laeven and Valencia 2013).
Conclusion
Based on the discussion from the above report, it could be concluded that the vast form of usage of Information Technological systems within the CBA would be a vital form of effort for the growth of the business efficiency. IT systems within the organisation would help in further developments of the sector and would also help the customers in gaining a lot of services from the organisation. Hence it would be extremely vital for the organisation to deal with these forms of systems for the betterment of the orgasnisation.
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