Executive Summary
Security Benefit, a leading retirement solutions provider, partnered with ITTStar to implement a robust, centrally governed, and automated AWS infrastructure optimized for operational excellence and regulatory compliance. This engagement focused on establishing stringent security controls for retirement plan data, enabling comprehensive audit readiness, and deploying proactive monitoring with automated disaster recovery capabilities. By leveraging AWS native services and serverless architecture, Security Benefit achieved a secure, scalable, and resilient environment that streamlined financial operations while protecting critical client information.
Customer Challenge
Security Benefit encountered substantial infrastructure challenges as their retirement services operations expanded:
- Financial Services Compliance Pressure: Increasing regulatory requirements for retirement plan administration demanded enhanced auditability and traceable controls across client-facing systems.
- Lack of Preventive Controls: Absence of standardized access policies for financial systems resulted in inconsistent deployments and exposed retirement plan data to potential misconfigurations.
- Decentralized Change Management: Manual deployment processes for financial applications led to delays and errors, impacting system stability and client service delivery.
- Cost Allocation Challenges: Incomplete resource tagging hampered accurate cost allocation across different retirement plan products, affecting profitability analysis.
- Business Continuity Risks: No automated disaster recovery workflow for critical financial systems left client retirement data exposed to extended outages.
ITTStar Solution
ITTStar delivered a comprehensive AWS solution for Security Benefit leveraging secure serverless architecture:
- Serverless Financial Data Architecture: Client portal access through Route 53 and CloudFront, interfacing with S3-hosted secure interfaces and API Gateway routing authenticated requests to private Lambda functions processing retirement plan data in encrypted RDS databases within secure VPC architecture.
- Financial Data Security Framework:
- Preventive Controls: Strict IAM policies for financial data access, AWS WAF protection for client applications, and Certificate Manager ensuring encrypted connections. KMS provided comprehensive encryption for client financial information, while S3 policies and object locks protected retirement plan documents.
- Detective Controls: CloudTrail monitoring all financial data access, AWS Config continuously monitoring regulatory compliance, and CloudWatch tracking client interactions and transaction processing with real-time alerts for compliance violations.
- Automated Financial Operations: Infrastructure provisioned using IaC principles for financial services, with automated pipelines integrated with compliance approval systems and Systems Manager Automation, reducing manual intervention in production financial systems.
- Regulatory Tagging & Governance: AWS Config Rules validated comprehensive tagging for regulatory reporting and cost allocation across retirement products (401k, 403b, IRAs), ensuring required metadata for financial auditing.
- Automated Disaster Recovery: AWS Backup automated regular and cross-region backups of critical client financial data in RDS and regulatory documents in S3, enabling rapid restoration with defined recovery objectives.
- Financial Services Monitoring: CloudWatch Logs aggregated all transaction logs and processing records with dedicated compliance logging. CloudWatch Alarms monitored Lambda performance for retirement calculations, RDS performance for client data access, and API Gateway response times.
Why AWS?
Security Benefit leveraged AWS for its comprehensive financial services-grade capabilities:
- Financial Data Governance: Centralized policy enforcement through IAM, automated audit trails via CloudTrail for regulatory reporting, and robust protection of client retirement information.
- Serverless Financial Processing: Lambda functions and API Gateway provided automatic scaling for retirement plan calculations while maintaining strict security boundaries for financial data.
- Regulatory Compliance: Native support for automated compliance monitoring, scheduled backup of financial records, and disaster recovery capabilities.
Why Security Benefit Chose ITTStar?
Security Benefit chose ITTStar for proven expertise in financial services cloud environments:
- Financial Services Architecture Expertise: Deep experience in serverless architectures for retirement plan administration with comprehensive regulatory compliance.
- Regulatory Automation Mastery: Proven capability in delivering automated, policy-driven infrastructures for financial services regulatory requirements.
- Operational Excellence Focus: Processes that ensure regulatory compliance while protecting sensitive client financial data.
Impact and Benefits:
ITTStar's AWS solution delivered significant value for Security Benefit's retirement services:
- 1. Enhanced Regulatory Audit Readiness: Continuous monitoring through AWS Config and comprehensive CloudTrail logging reduced regulatory audit preparation time by 60% while ensuring complete traceability of client financial data access.
- 2. Improved Financial Data Security: Comprehensive security controls and automated remediation workflows reduced security incidents involving client financial information by over 50%, strengthening client trust and regulatory compliance.
- 3. Streamlined Financial Operations: Automated change management and comprehensive tagging resulted in predictable deployments, simplified cost allocation across retirement products, and improved operational efficiency.
- 4. Rapid Recovery for Financial Systems: Automated disaster recovery workflows reduced mean time to resolution for critical incidents affecting client retirement data by 30%, ensuring minimal disruption to plan administration services.
- 5. Enhanced Business Continuity: Centralized backup automation and rapid restoration procedures substantially improved uptime and reliability for critical retirement plan administration, ensuring consistent service delivery for clients.
