Apr 26, 2021 The rise of the pandemic last year meant that corporates around the globe had to embrace a highly dispersed, virtualised environment to keep the wheels of business turning. This is now changing the way that banks need to move forward, with both their security as well as their service assurance. So says Darren Anstee, chief technology officer for security at NetScout, a global provider of service assurance, security and business analytics. He explains that, at the start of 2020, digital transformation in the financial services sector was already well underway, and the intervening year has only accelerated this transformation. Writing in a recent blog, he notes that: “The Covid-19 lockdown shut branches, forcing customers online; in fact, it is estimated that 35% of customers have increased their online banking usage during the pandemic. Customers that have grown accustomed to the speed and convenience of online banking are unlikely to revert to call centres or go back to using an agent or a branch to the same extent as they did previously.”