Societe Generale IT staff will be a deciding factor in whether
the bank's programme to prevent a repeat of the £3.6bn rogue trader
fraud succeeds, according to a
report published by the French bank last week.
The bank is spending £80m over the next two years including
"significant IT investments" to prevent a repeat of the
unauthorised trading activity carried out by Jermain Kerviel in
January,
The bank's IT infrastructure has weaknesses, according to the
report. IT improvements will contribute to a "considerable
workload" for the overall programme of improvements.
"The capacity of the IT department to respond to all of the
demands will be a determining factor in the programmes success," it
said.
The bank has almost 200 people working on improving the its
defences, which include improving the security of the IT
infrastructure and applications, the control of
IT user access rights and improving systems to detect
inappropriate activity from within the company.
These include regularly changing passwords for sensitive
applications and reinforcing access controls.
The report said work is under way and that the bank would
continue to spend money on improving IT systems when initial
projects are complete.
"These projects, which have already been launched, will for the
most part be completed during the first half of 2009, although
investment in IT will continue into 2010," said the report.
Bob McDowall, analyst at TowerGroup, said it is important for
the bank's reputation to be seen to be spending money on IT
security. "The main area is security related and Socgen is
investing in biometric technology which is quite expensive and will
require elaborate processes."