Fiducia & GAD IT AG is the service provider for information technology within the cooperative financial group. The company, which has administrative headquarters in Karlsruhe and Münster and branch offices in Munich, Frankfurt and Berlin, currently employs almost 6,400 people in the group of companies, which together generate an annual group turnover of around 1.4 billion euros. The clientele of Fiducia & GAD IT AG includes all 1,000 Volksbanken and Raiffeisenbanken in Germany, the companies of the cooperative financial group as well as numerous private banks and companies in other sectors, including the ADAC. Fiducia & GAD IT AG looks after more than 173,000 banking workstations, manages almost 83 million customer accounts and ensures a smooth cash supply nationwide with a good 36,000 self-service devices of its own. In its high-security data centers, Fiducia & GAD currently operates the two banking procedures agree21 and bank21.
With around 168 million mobile customers, 28 million fixed-network lines and 19 million broadband lines, Deutsche Telekom is one of the leading integrated telecommunications companies worldwide. Deutsche Telekom offers fixed-network / broadband, mobile communications, Internet and Internet TV products and services for consumers, and information and communications technology solutions for corporate and business customers. Deutsche Telekom is represented in more than 50 countries. In the 2017 financial year, the company generated revenue of EUR 74.9 billion with around 216,000 employees worldwide - around 66 percent of this outside Germany.
There is a permanent internal and external document exchange (e.g. with bank customers) among the employees of the Volks- and Raiffeisenbanken. Since there was no internal solution for this up to now, the employees resorted to private services. However, these private solutions are considered to be very insecure, as they neither have end-to-end encryption nor represent a service within the territory of Fiducia & GAD IT AG and thus evade access.
Telekom's task was to provide employees with a fully functional alternative that could score points in terms of data security. The solution to be offered therefore had to meet many functional requirements and security features.
The data should be able to be stored centrally and also include sharing options for registered users and non-registered external parties. Access to the data from the cloud and the Internet should also be guaranteed.
The requirements of Fiducia & GAD IT AG:
A major challenge was the merger of the former Fiducia IT AG with GAD eG, which occurred during the course of the project. The reallocation of corporate responsibilities led to a change in contact persons in product management and at board level. In addition, GAD already had the product eTresor in its portfolio before the merger. The need for a new solution was based on various limitations of the existing product (max. 7 MB files, no sharing functionality, no encryption etc.).
The connection to the internal ordering system and the ordering system provided to banks was mandatory. Therefore the solution had to offer a provisioning interface so that customer-clients could be provisioned from the internal ordering system. This should be possible without a biomechanical interface. In addition to provisioning, the reporting had to be automatically readable so that billing information could be processed in the existing system.
The Telekom Enterprise File Sync & Share solution Secure Data Drive (SDD), developed by DRACOON, was selected as the solution for the new product agree21Doksharing. SDD enables Fiducia & GAD IT AG to operate an on-premises installation that is also accessible from the Internet. The used platform is redundant and highly secure. Client separation can be carried out at virtualisation or application level, depending on the customer. The REST API provided by SDD offers a provisioning option that can automatically create clients for individual banks. During the provisioning process, both the number of users and storage space can be taken into account.
SDD offers users the full range of functions. The files can be stored centrally and access to files and folders can be managed. It is also possible to create and share upload and download links to files or folders (e.g. password protected).
Rights and roles can be specifically assigned using the authorization management. This can be used, for example, to determine which user has access to a data room or which administrator is granted read access to the system log. The validity of the login of an external employee can also be viewed.
Due to the multi-client capability of SDD, Fiducia & GAD IT AG can offer its customers different brandings. This is necessary because in addition to the Volks- and Raiffeisenbanken (which usually all have a similar CI/CD) there are also other customers from the cooperative financial group (e.g. R+V Versicherung, PSD Bank Group, Bausparkasse Schwäbisch Hall). Logos, colours, URLs and, if necessary, texts are adapted.
For the solution, Telekom takes over parts of the operation, provides 24/7 support and installs quarterly updates, first on a test environment and then on the productive environment. Due to the high security requirements, a remote desktop connection is used so that Telekom employees do not have full access to the system.
Through the use of Secure Data Drive, Fiducia & GAD IT AG is eliminating shadow IT and offers its users a solution that works on the basis of the EU GDPR even before its introduction. With the possibility to share files with third parties via download link (password protected), users can now provide documents quickly, easily and above all without detours.
Thanks to the provisioning interface used, Fiducia & GAD IT AG not only saves time, but also minimises the risk of incorrect provisioning, as no employee has to intervene in the process. On the customer side, automated invoicing also takes place through the connection.
In addition, there is a regular exchange between Fiducia & GAD IT AG product management and Telekom. Therefore, feature requests and improvement requests can be recorded and evaluated immediately. This guarantees a fast implementation in the development plan.
A special feature is the multi-client capability of the SDD solution. Through this, Fiducia & GAD IT AG can offer each Volks- und Raiffeisenbank and other customers an individually customized branding. The familiar design of the applications then creates trust, especially among end users. In addition, the very good usability is maintained, since only the branding is adapted. The redundant infrastructure used and the good scalability of the system are also a special feature of the solution. This means that Fiducia & GAD IT AG can guarantee its customers high availability of the application. Unplanned downtimes do not result from the premium support provided by Telekom.
Thomas Zimmerer, Product Manager at Fiducia & GAD IT AG, says:
We are very pleased that we have found a solution with Telekom and Secure Data Drive that fits optimally into our existing structure and ensures smooth and secure data exchange. The challenge for the software solution, which now successfully manages the sharing of documents, was not insignificant because Telekom had to take many nodes into account during implementation. SDD was very quickly accepted by our employees as a sharing tool. Thanks to the intuitive user interface, we were able to completely eliminate existing security risks by implementing a secure solution".
Thomas Zimmerer
Product Manager Fiducia & GAD IT AG
© 2023 DRACOON GmbH
Made in Germany
Phone. +49 (941) 7 83 85-0
