HDFC Bank has entered into a $7.4 million, three-year strategic Enterprise Level Agreement with Symantec for IT compliance, enterprise security and storage management solutions. Symantec will also provide HDFC Bank with consulting and implementation services. According to CN Ram, head - IT, HDFC Bank, “HDFC Bank entered into this deal with Symantec to further enhance the bank’s security posture, ensure our data is protected and available and help facilitate our compliance and corporate governance programmes to increase customer confidence.”

"HDFC not only views SOX, BASEL II and ISO 27001 as a compliance requirement but an agent to improve their functional and process efficiency proving as a competitive advantage for the bank," said G.V.Gopalakrishnan, Executive VP – IT. HDFC is also listed at the NYSE, thus it has to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley requirement. The BASEL II is also being implemented at the bank and it is also going for ISO 27001 compliance.

"Symantec will bring in its expertise in helping the bank meet the complex compliance requirements of SOX, BASEL II and ISO 27001 and help in defining and bringing consistency in processes," said G.V.Gopalakrishnan

"The various compliances like SOX, Basel II, ISO 27001, RBI norms are very amorphous in nature," said Umang Bedi, Business Head, Banking and Financial Services, Symantec. They are vague and not specific. There are popular frameworks like COBIT, ITIL that act as an enabler to convert the compliance into actionable policies for companies.

Symantec will map the various controls at HDFC and match them with the compliance requirements of SOX, Basel II and ISO 27001. They will also fit into the bank policy to throw an automated view of the compliance posture for the CEO and top management.

For e.g. If the company has configured the Anti-virus or data archives with certain controls, then Symantec will map the controls on the basis of the compliance requirements with SOX, Basel II and ISO 27001 and provide a single window view of the compliance posture with the help of a software with reference to the Anti-virus and data Archival controls that also matches with the company policy.

The partnership would also save a lot of man-hours as the IT workforce will be able to dedicate more hours to the IT processes, rather than on evidence collection. Interestingly, about three hundred employees were manually extracting evidence into the Excel file, CSV format for the audit purpose. The initiative will provide an end-to-end and automated IT governance posture.

Vishal Dhupar, managing director - India, Symantec, said, "HDFC’s investment in Symantec products and services will help the company minimise IT risk and maximise the efficiency of its IT infrastructure to reduce costs and improve the delivery of service to its customers."