As financial services providers scale, they are also adapting to a rapidly shifting commercial landscape and increasingly looking to the cloud for next-gen solutions. Cloud payment HSMs can ease operational headaches, provide greater flexibility, deliver higher ROIs, and boast unparalleled scalability.
Why Security and Speed Are Critical in Payment Processing
According to the newly published AWS blog post, “Protect payment workloads through AWS Marketplace with Futurex’s cloud payment HSMs,” co-written by Futurex’s Adam Cason and AWS’s Karthik Krishnan and Sudhir Kalidindi, “Hardware security modules (HSMs) are a critical component underpinning the security of global financial transactions. HSMs perform encryption and key management tasks inside a physically secure boundary. This protects them from complex physical and logical attack vectors. When used in payment environments, HSMs must be certified under rigorous standards, including NIST’s Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) or the PCI Security Standards Council’s PCI HSM requirements. Cloud payment HSMs offer the same cryptographic functionality as on-premises payment HSMs. This means compliance requirements are met and end-to-end security is maintained, while the implementation and maintenance burden on IT and security staff is reduced.”
Security and speed are essential features of future-proof cryptographic systems, which in turn allow organizations to scale and grow their businesses. When it comes to implementing a cloud-based cryptographic strategy, you want to design an environment to meet your current and future needs.
“While our industry-leading payment HSM speeds of 50,000 TPS exceed what most organizations need today, we have engineered them to meet business needs now and for years to come,” states Ryan Smith, vice president, global business development, at Futurex.
According to Card Rates, roughly one billion credit card transactions occur every day around the world, with banks typically processing “an awe-inspiring” 5,000 transactions per second (TPS). If you think that’s a lot, Futurex’s payment hardware security modules (HSMs) can process up to 50,000 TPS, the fastest in the world.
Financial Services Shift Operations to the Cloud
Many financial services organizations are taking a cloud-first approach to payment processing to gain cryptographic flexibility and scalability. According to the AWS blog post, “When Futurex introduced its VirtuCrypt cloud payment HSM service and made it available through AWS Marketplace, it allowed organizations to move away from their on-premises payment HSMs to the cloud. Many organizations have since moved their payment applications to AWS, in conjunction with Futurex’s cloud payment HSMs, to increase scalability and redundancy, as well as reduce internal IT operations so that they can focus on their core competencies.”
AWS and Futurex have worked together to offer a streamlined method for organizations to move their payment processing to the cloud. Cason, Krishnan, and Kalidindi outline how to get started with onboarding, deployment, provisioning, and integration.
For More Information
- Futurex’s VirtuCrypt cloud payment HSMs – AWS Marketplace
- Service overview whitepaper – cloud payment HSMs
- Additional VirtuCrypt cloud payment HSM information
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