In this digital era, profound change in the relationship between Societe Generale and its customers is required. Given the growing number and sophistication of digital attacks, Societe Generale has made cybersecurity a central focus in order to protect its customers, their data, and its information systems.
Digital connections account for 86% of Societe Generale's incoming contacts today, with 700 million connections a year in France, mainly from mobile devices since the end of 2012. Societe Generale has accelerated its digital transformation and considers the development of these new technologies a key opportunity to better serve its clients. Nevertheless, its digital transformation and the changing needs of customers have led to an increase in risks related to fraud or malicious acts.
With the development of technologies such as cloud computing, big data/machine learning, and of mobility and social networks, traditional perimeter-based security models have been upended.
Xavier Lofficial Societe Generale Group Head of Transformation, Processes and Information
With cybercrime increasing in volume and sophistication, the protection of our customers, their data and our information systems has become a major challenge for Societe Generale. Big companies cannot respond to these technological developments in isolation. In addition to countermeasures to address the growth in related risks, our cybersecurity strategy also incorporates open innovation
An aligned five-pronged ISS strategy
To meet these challenges, Societe Generale ensures data security and compliance with banking secrecy and is constantly investing to better protect the assets and transactions of its customers.
The five-pronged information system security strategy is aligned with the Group strategy:
- Security of the Group's sensitive applications,
- Security of all customer data, both private and banking,
- Group’s capacity for detection and response,
- Strengthening of the security proposed to customers (via robust but also user-friendly tools)
- Raising the awareness of and providing support to customers and employees.
All of the cybercrime prevention systems draw on prevention and protection, detection and reaction, and on raising client and employee awareness.
Our customer solutions
One of our leading solutions is the dynamic security code found on the back of our bank cards. This is a built-in digital screen that displays a new code every hour, making it impossible to reuse the data. In six months, nearly 150,000 of our customers have already adopted this solution..
We also offer software to make the customer's own area on our website more secure: Trusteer, through which the user can check that the site being consulted is not a false site that has hacked Societe Generale's identity. Another example is Secure Access, a solution dedicated to businesses that secures the authentication and validation of payment and deposit orders.
New technologies help to ensure security and build digital trust. In order to detect fraud, big data tools can be used to collect and consolidate large volumes of data. Mathematical models are used to detect suspicious usage and events. Using a defined standard model and standard deviation, when a transaction varies past that standard deviation, an alert is sent. The machine learning systems that can for example detect fraudulent bank card transactions, are increasingly powerful and are showing us anomalies that were not easily detected before.
In its transformation process, Societe Generale is continuing to develop its open innovation strategy, ramping up its relationships with startups and FinTechs and exchanging and cooperating with them more and more. With a double objective for the Group: sharing its expertise (in regulations, investments, distribution, etc.) with outside players and drawing on their know-how in terms of user experience, new technologies and working methods.
Across all its businesses, Societe Generale is using digital technologies to transform the banking relationship with its clients. Our Global Banking and Investor Solutions business, which serves institutional clients, large corporates and private banking clients, has also placed digital and innovation at the centre of its strategy.
