Insignia Financial's next security strategy takes shape

Insignia Financial will spend the next year tuning and optimising its consolidated security stack and simplifying ways of working for its analysts, capping off work under a three-year security strategy.

The financial services company incorporates the old IOOF, as well as the ANZ Wealth and MLC Wealth divisions that it acquired from ANZ and NAB respectively.

Chief information security officer James Ng told the iTnews Podcast that consolidation and simplification of the security estates inherited from these constituent businesses dominated Insignia Financial’s FY24 to FY26 security strategy.

“We've made a significant set of investments to really consolidate our tool set,” Ng said.

“We've gone from a multitude of different vendors that we inherited from those three different disparate organisations coming together, and we've brought that into a much more reduced set of strategic partners and platforms.”

Ng said that a range of options was used in the consolidation, including standardising on one platform, expanding the use of a platform used by one acquired business Insignia-wide where it made sense, or - in some cases - re-platforming entirely to a new tool.

In parallel, the company has focused on removing duplicated effort and inefficiency from its security operations processes.

“I often use the concept of ‘swivel chair’. I sometimes look at our analysts’ screens, and they've got many windows open because they're pivoting from one screen to another,” Ng said.

“If there's a way we can help them reduce that complexity and make their lives a lot easier, that's what we're aiming to do as well.”

Both the consolidation and simplification activities are continuing this financial year, as the current security strategy nears its expiry.

“We want to make sure that we're optimising and tuning the tools to complete their rollout,” Ng said.

Meanwhile, the next security strategy is already in the wings.

“That's very much focused on ensuring that we're continuing to deliver what we already have in train,” Ng said.

Officially, the horizon for the incoming strategy is “FY27-plus”, a nod to its alignment with a broader corporate strategy that spans until FY30.

As with the current strategy, Insignia Financial intends to continue to review and refresh it annually to take into account the fast-changing nature of the threat landscape “in the context of ensuring that the initiatives that we were working on are fit for purpose.”