Real-time Risk Aggregation using iPushPull

Proprietary Traders, Brokers, Clearing Services and their clients all need to know the market exposure and risk to their firms at any given point in time. Risk managers often sit in front of multiple screens monitoring positions in real-time from multiple risk modules on different trading platforms. Without expensive development work or costly enterprise risk systems, there is no way to automatically aggregate market risk, trading positions and P&L’s in real-time from multiple trading and risk platforms in multiple locations.

Principles of Risk Aggregation – BCBS239

In addition to trading risk, since the financial crisis, regulators have introduced new broader rules such as BCBS239, ‘Principles for Effective Risk Data Aggregation and Risk Reporting’, aiming to strengthen risk management at banks and reduce the chances of future instabilities in the global financial system. However, many key challenges such as budgetary pressures, old legacy systems and complexity in consolidating risk from different locations means many banks and other financial organisations are unable to automate necessary risk frameworks. This often leads them to resort to manual workarounds which are slow, cumbersome and can lead to human error.

Consolidate your real-time risk

iPushPull offers a plug-and-play solution which can be set up with no integration or development work. Our service enables the automatic consolidation of risk periodically, or in real-time, from multiple locations and multiple sources.
Risk can be aggregated at any level, from high-level summaries for executive management to detailed reports for risk managers who need to drill down to traders’ individual positions. iPushPull’s technology integrates with popular desktop applications, like Microsoft Excel. It also makes it easy to set up customised alerts, view risk on mobile devices and permission and share risk dashboards with other departments or clients. The platform offers end-to-end encryption and a full audit trail with history of every single price update and who looked at it, when and where from.

Automate and consolidate your risk management controls with no development work using iPushPull and share securely with other departments and clients. Sign up for a free trial today, or contact us for further information.

June 21, 2016June 23, 2016

What makes a good collaboration platform?

Symphony and Markit partnership boost collaboration in Financial Services

Symphony and Markit have announced a partnership to promote the adoption of a Collaboration Platform as a Service (CPaaS) in the financial industry. The news is likely to provide a boost to the adoption of collaboration platforms across a sector which has been traditionally reluctant to entrust its confidential content to third party services. The partners have released few details, but have indicated that the service will combine Symphony’s messaging platform with Markit’s data feeds and analytics to provide new applications, starting with reference data and advanced charting apps. So what makes a good collaboration platform?

Collaboration platform improves business efficiency

Collaboration Platforms aim to improve business efficiency by automating manual workflows and integrating communications into the applications people already use. iPushPull‘s customers, for example, use our plugins for Microsoft Excel to share live data across the office or to the other side of the planet directly from their existing desktop applications, reducing emails and accelerating business processes. However, the term collaboration is broad, incorporating everything from cloud-based productivity tools like Google Sheets to unified communications platforms like Slack and Circuit. It remains to be seen what Symphony and Markit will bring to the party.

Collaboration platforms must be available across every device

To succeed in an increasingly mobile world, a collaboration service must be available across every device. On mobile, lack of integration between applications actively hinders productivity, as Network World recently highlighted:

The process of switching between applications on a desktop is inconvenient, but most users manage. On a mobile device, having to constantly flip between applications while trying to remember data or cut and paste data is inefficient and can make users less productive.

Symphony has been slow to release mobile applications – its iPhone app only debuted this month, and we await the arrival of its Android offering.

Data Security and Encryption

The main sticking point preventing financial organisations from entrusting their confidential data to third-party services is concern about data security. The business and reputational risks associated with data breaches are potentially enormous. Both Symphony and iPushPull incorporate end-to-end encryption to reduce the risk of breaches, but we’ve found that financial service customers still insist on on-premises deployments of iPushPull to keep their data under their control. As the pressure to cut costs continues across the financial sector, the adoption of secure cloud services is likely to grow.

iPushPull lets you share live data between the applications you already use and the web. It automates workflows and simplifies business processes. It’s secure, access controlled and encrypted end-to-end. Sign up here for a free trial.

April 19, 2016April 19, 2016

Google Sheets and Excel Online vs iPushPull – Why choose iPushPull?

We’re often asked about the differences between iPushPull vs Google Sheets and Excel Online. The Google and Microsoft applications attempt to replicate desktop spreadsheets but offer vastly reduced functionality and integration. And they don’t tackle the data security and access control issues that face all users who share spreadsheets with their colleagues and clients. In this respect, web-hosted sheets are not much better than a spreadsheet saved on a shared drive.

We decided to think different. We wanted to let our customers retain all the features of their desktop applications but also give them the convenience of cloud access to their data. So we built iPushPull.

Google Sheets and Excel Online vs iPushPull: Share your data without compromising on functionality

iPushPull integrates directly with your desktop Microsoft Excel, so you retain all the features of the desktop application and can continue to use your local database links, live feeds and custom macros. iPushPull lets you share some or all of the data from your sheet with whoever you choose, wherever they are. And because you’re still using your full desktop application you can still see your data when you don’t have web access – for example, when you’re on the train.

Your latest LIVE data available on any device

Whether the data in your desktop Excel spreadsheet is entered manually, updated by a live feed or imported from a local ERP or CRM system, iPushPull lets you share it with other Excel users and view it on the web or mobile. iPushPull can be easily integrated into any website – we’ve even developed a highly-rated plugin for WordPress-powered sites.

Once you’ve started sharing data from your spreadsheets, iPushPull will be updated every time your data changes – there’s no need to save your sheet. Your colleagues and clients will see the data update live in their spreadsheets or on any mobile device. There’s no need to reopen the file or hit refresh.

Superior access control

When you share a Google or Excel spreadsheet with someone, they get access to all the data contained within it. iPushPull lets you control access at the sheet, range or even at the individual cell level. So you can choose to share just the critical information from your sheet with the individuals or groups of people who need to see it, with no chance of over-sharing.

Complete security – spreadsheet data encrypted from end-to-end

Google Sheets and Excel Online are basically files stored on a cloud service. As such, they’re vulnerable to the kind of security breaches which have, sadly, become a regular occurrence. iPushPull lets you encrypt your data before it leaves your device, so it’s totally secure until it reaches the intended recipient. We can’t read your data, or give anyone else access to it, even if we wanted to! And we have some exciting developments in the pipeline that will give you even greater control over where, when and by whom your data can be accessed.

Consolidate and summarise data from across your business and customer base

iPushPull lets you pull data from multiple remote spreadsheets and mobile devices into a single sheet, automatically. It’s easy to build summary reports using data from across your business, regardless of where the data was entered or the application used to enter it. You don’t need a developer to create your own user-focussed B2B or B2C applications scaling to 10s, 100s or even 1000s of users. This just isn’t possible with web-hosted sheets.

Share data across all the applications you use – even using SMS

The iPushPull Excel Add-In works with all versions of desktop Microsoft Excel from 2007 to 2016. You can also access your data with our desktop and mobile websites (and with our upcoming Google Sheets add-in and Android and iOS apps, too). And when you’re not connected to the internet, you can even push and pull your data using SMS. When you’re using Google Sheets or Office 365 you’re locked into a walled garden.

iPushPull gives you desktop functionality, cloud connectivity, mobile access and enterprise-grade permissioning, security and encryption.

April 7, 2016April 26, 2016

What(sapp) took you so long?

At iPushPull we take our users’ privacy and security very seriously, so we were intrigued that two of the biggest news stories to break this week relate to just that. We think it’s great that everyone is suddenly talking about encryption. Whatsapp‘s plan to incorporate Open Whisper Systems‘ TextSecure protocol for end-to-end encryption is old news, announced way back in 2014. Perhaps the most surprising about this week’s headline-grabbing roll-out is that it took so long to get here. There are significant technical hurdles to overcome when it comes to retro-fitting encryption to an existing platform, but making that additional layer of security convenient for customers to use is and even bigger challenge. Whatsapp have done a great job; most of their billion or so users won’t even be be aware of it. In fact, it’s so seamlessly integrated they had to put a message in the app to let people know it’s there.

Whatsapp end-to-end encryption to Panama Papers

What’s really interesting about the Whatsapp story is that, not only is end-to-end encryption enabled by default, there is no way to opt out and turn it off. It’s a clear statement of intent from Whatsapp that they believe this is the new minimum benchmark for privacy and security.

At iPushPull we designed security from the outset and we always at the forefront of our considerations when designing and developing the platform. We’ve had end-to-end encryption since we started in 2014, but we don’t make it compulsory. We allow our users to enable it on a page-by-page basis, whenever they like, and adjust those settings as their privacy needs change. A new, more intuitive user interface is already in development which we hope will open encryption for spreadsheets to the masses in the same way Whatsapp has done for messages. Just as we strive to let our users take control of their content, we believe that they should have the tools to take control of the security of that content too.

This brings us neatly to the biggest news story of the week: The Panama Papers. Whatever you think about the morals of Mossack Fonseca and some of their customers (and as others have noted, there are genuine reasons for using the services they offer), there is no doubt that it represents a massive failure of corporate and data security. How many other corporations are at risk of a similar leak; how many of those corporations hold information about you?

No matter how seriously an organisation takes data security or how well they think it is implemented, it’s all for nothing if employees are circumventing it by, for example, emailing documents to clients or putting them in their personal cloud storage to work on at home.

There are smarter and more secure ways to share your business or personal content of course. That’s what we do here at iPushPull. Register for free today and start taking control of your privacy?

April 6, 2016April 8, 2016

End-to-end encryption for all Whatsapp messages …but not for spreadsheets!

Hot on the heels from the security fob off from Apple to the US government, WhatsApp is updating its messenger app with strong encryption so that every text and voice call will be highly protected for their 1 billion+ users.

After starting the process in 2014, Facebook owned Whatsapp have fully completed their roll out of Signal Protocol to all of their app users. Developed by Open Whisper Systems, the open source code was made famous by US whistleblower and privacy advocate Edward Snowden.

encryption

What does end-to-end encryption mean?

In a nutshell, end-to-end encryption means only the sender and receiver can view a message and no content or information is visible on Whatsapp’s servers without encryption keys, something which Whatsapp does not store, also commonly known as zero-knowledge. Messages are encrypted before they leave a users device which means that if the US government demanded to see users communications, Whatsapp would be unable to provide it due to the encryption and Whatsapp does not store the key to decrypt it.

Secure your spreadsheets with end-to-end encryption

As security is paramount in today’s world iPushPull built its content sharing platform with end-to-end encryption since its inception.

By using iPushPull you can use end-to-end encryption for all of your important spreadsheets that contain sensitive and confidential information. iPushPull already offers server and client-side encryption, providing end-to-end security for your documents and data. In addition, our patent-pending access control will add further layers of security, making iPushPull significantly more secure than the vast majority of commonly-used file and data sharing platforms. iPushPull enables granular levels of security and access on a cell by bell basis within a spreadsheet. Please register for a free trial to find out more.

Technical overview of Whatsapp end-to-end encryption

For a full technical overview of Whatsapp’s encryption please go here and for Open Whisper Systems here.

January 26, 2016January 27, 2016

MiFID II Research Unbundling: Find out what’s next

The iPushPull team is heading over to Bloomberg’s London office on 27th January for their MiFID II: Spotlight on Independent Research event. MiFID II (Markets in Financial Instruments Directive) is new European legislation intended to improve the functioning of financial markets after the global financial crisis and to strengthen investor protection. The aspect of MiFID II that interests us most is the financial research unbundling.

Until now, when banks provided research information to institutional investors such as pension funds and asset managers, the cost of that research was included (or bundled) in the trading commissions charged by the banks and brokers they trade with. This practice generated incentives for these investors to trade exclusively with particular institutions, rather than seeking better deals elsewhere or investigating alternative assets to invest in. In the new world, pension funds and asset managers will be responsible for monitoring their use of research, recording how much they are spending on it and reporting this information to both their investors and the regulator.

A MiFID II Primer

MiFID II is a rather dry subject to research but its effects on the financial markets will be far-reaching and many institutions are unprepared. For the most thorough and reliable information, head to the Financial Conduct Authority’s website. This covers all the MiFID II proposals, not just those affecting research providers and consumers, and has guides to what firms will need to do to ensure their business functions will be compliant with the legislation. It’s a lengthy read, so for those interested purely in research unbundling, TABB Forum has published a handy digest of the proposals.

MiFID II Research Unbundling Delays and Uncertainty

MiFID II was supposed to be implemented in 2017, but because of the size and scope of the proposed regulations a delay until January 2018 is widely expected. However, the EU authorities are continuing to stall on the detail of the proposals and the confirmation the new implementation date. A leaked draft of the proposals even suggested that payment for research through commissions will continue to be permitted. The continuing delay and uncertainty is making life extremely difficult for affected firms, who will have to scramble to make the major changes required across their business functions, from client services to IT and HR systems.

This week’s event at Bloomberg focusses on the effects of MiFID II on independent providers of financial research. At iPushPull, we’re helping these publishers (and their subscribers) get ready for the changes with our secure, monitored and access-controlled document distribution platform. It should be a stimulating morning.

November 4, 2015November 5, 2015

FuturesTechs chooses iPushPull for Secure Delivery of Financial Research

iPushPull and FuturesTechs Joint Venture

iPushPull is delighted to announce our new partnership with FuturesTechs, the FCA regulated & award-winning technical research company. FuturesTechs is using iPushPull’s new document distribution feature to securely deliver daily technical analysis research to their clients. This new feature enables iPushPull’s customers to share content with their clients across all devices while letting them control access and monitor document usage.

Clive Lambert, the founder of FuturesTechs, said yesterday:

“We feel the future of Research under the new MiFID II unbundling rules set to come in in 2017 will require secure delivery across all manner of devices, with the ability to audit, control and track usage. With the help of iPushPull, Futurestechs will be well placed to partner with all manner of financial institutions, offering a clean, flexible technology-driven solution to ensure white-label clients can control their brand, reach and pricing; offering our well respected and entirely independent analysis to their clients as a viable, compliant and cost effective alternative to the pre-MiFID II options currently available”.

Dan Eccleston, one of the co-founders of iPushPull, said:

“The way in which information is shared is changing rapidly as enterprises try to keep up with the flexibility of the cloud services now commonplace in consumer markets, while at the same time trying to maintain the all-important control and security businesses require. In addition to these challenges, regulators in financial markets are introducing rules which require businesses to show a far greater degree of transparency than has previously been required, particularly in relation to research materials.

We’re delighted that FuturesTechs has chosen iPushPull as a partner both to help them meet these regulatory challenges and to leverage iPushPull’s unique distribution platform to scale up its ability to distribute information simply and securely”.

For a free trial of FuturesTechs on iPushPull, please click here

About FuturesTechs

FuturesTechs is one of the UK’s leading independent technical analysis companies, founded by Clive Lambert in 2000. It is recognised as a leading research house and the winner of multiple industry awards. Clive is a well-known figure in the technical analysis and Futures industries. He was a board member of the UK Society of Technical Analysts between 2003 and 2011 and is still a regular speaker on their yearly Diploma Course, and is the Author of “Candlestick Charts“, published in 2009. FuturesTechs is FCA registered, registration number 460598.

July 21, 2015July 21, 2015

Another day, another hack – using client-side encryption to protect your data online

The theft of extremely sensitive data at extra-marital affairs site Ashley Madison is just the latest in a series of online data thefts to hit the headlines. As each new case is reported, it reinforces the message that client-side (or end-to-end) encryption – encrypting your data before it leaves your computer or phone – is the best way to be sure that your data is safe online. This article looks at the threats and three ways you can protect your files, data and messages on the web.

Inside Jobs, Social Engineering and Weak Passwords

Ashley Madison claimed that it had received an award for its security measures but unfortunately it was not immune to the inside job – it appears that a company contractor with access to their database has stolen the personal data of millions of users, leaving them and the company open to blackmail and fraud.

Other widely reported hacks have been performed using social engineering. This is the practice of tricking the operators of web sites and services to reveal information or perform actions such as resetting passwords. Many social engineers are highly skilled at this kind of manipulation, but it’s often weak practices at the companies themselves that lead to security compromises.

But probably the most common cause of security breaches is still good old-fashioned password guessing. Too many people still use weak passwords, or the same password across multiple sites, so as soon as one of their sites is compromised all their accounts are at risk.

The best way to protect your data online is to encrypt it before it even gets there. That way, even if an attacker gets access to your account, they cannot decrypt it unless they have access to the keys and they reside on your computer or mobile phone. There’s no way to compromise your data without having access to one of your client devices.

Protecting your files online with SpiderOak and Tresorit

File Sync and Share services such as Dropbox and Google Drive are immensely popular because of their convenience and price. But they don’t encrypt your files before they leave your device – if an attacker gets access to your account at the cloud service they will have full access to all your files. High security alternatives such as Tresorit and SpiderOak are a much safer bet. Their client applications encrypt your files before they leave your computer and let you keep control of the encryption keys. By the time your files reach the cloud their content is unintelligible, and can only be decrypted on your computer or phone by you or someone you’ve authorised.

Protecting your live data online with iPushPull

We’ve built client-side encryption into iPushPull so you can share live data between Excel spreadsheets securely without any middle man being able to intercept it. This isn’t possible with Google Sheets or Excel Online which don’t support client side encryption. And because we’ve built encryption across our entire suite of applications, you can access and update your encrypted data on your mobile phone, in desktop Excel and using our upcoming Google Sheets plugin.

Instant Messaging – who can you trust?

The most popular business messaging services such as Skype do not support end-to-end encryption and are widely believed to have been compromised. In response, the number of end-to-end encrypted messaging services is increasing rapidly and includes established players such as BlackBerry Messenger Protected and more recent entrants such as the highly-respected Wickr. The EFF has produced a handy summary of the strengths and weaknesses of many of the players in the instant messaging market.

The cloud is a convenient place to store and share files, data and messages but your stuff isn’t always as safe as you might want it to be. However, with minimal extra effort you can add end-to-end encryption to stay in control and keep your data secure.

Want to securely share live data between your spreadsheets and the web? Sign up for a free trial of iPushPull today.

June 23, 2015October 15, 2015

Enrich your live iPushPull pages by adding links

Link your iPushPull pages to each other, to external websites, and to phone, email and SMS apps

Have you added links to your iPushPull pages yet? You can add links between iPushPull pages and to external websites, and links that launch your phone, SMS or email applications directly from your live data pages.

Adding links between your iPushPull pages lets you build rich, deep and LIVE websites, and our Microsoft Excel Add-in lets you add them quickly and easily. Links let you structure your data exactly the way you want to – with index pages and high level summary reports connected to detailed breakdowns, allowing your colleagues and clients to drill down to exactly the level of information they need. None of this compromises security – each user can still only access just those pages you’ve granted them permission to see.

One of our financial markets customers uses the iPushPull mobile app to keep their risk manager up-to-date with the latest market moves. The summary page displays constantly updating headline information about each of their traders’ positions, risk and P&L. Each row links to an individual page showing detailed activity data for the particular trader, so the manager can dive in whenever he needs more information. Another customer has built a set of pages linking the latest stock levels in their warehouse to delivery schedules. In both cases our customers are pulling live data from external systems (trading and ERP, respectively) into desktop Microsoft Excel, and pushing it to iPushPull directly from their spreadsheets. They’re using iPushPull as a live Content Management System. Try doing that with Google Sheets!

Drill down into trading history from portfolio screen

We’ve embedded a simulation of a live stock portfolio being generated by an iPushPull-enabled spreadsheet below. Click on the underlined links to see the trading history for each stock, and click Back to return to the portfolio page.

To view this in our web app on desktop or mobile click here. Please note that we’ve made these pages public for demo purposes – if this was your portfolio they would be protected by iPushPull’s award-winning security and encryption!

Launch your Email, Phone and SMS apps direct from your pages

With iPushPull links you’re not limited to creating connections between iPushPull pages. You can add links to external websites, and create links which launch email, phone and SMS apps with the email addresses and numbers you’ve specified when they’re tapped or clicked. Build a shared directory page for your team, or create live data pages for your clients and let them contact you directly from the page with no fiddling around switching apps or looking for numbers.

Here’s one we prepared earlier, quickly and easily, within Microsoft Excel using our Add-in. Click on any of the links to see what happens:

To view this in our web app click here. It’s best experienced on a mobile phone or similar device with phone and SMS capability. We don’t recommend you try calling any of the numbers!

For detailed instructions how to create links in your iPushPull pages, read our excellent support pages:

Why not sign up for a free trial and try it for yourself?

January 25, 2015May 20, 2015

iPushPull Website Update – Referrals and Folder Access Control

We’ve made it easier for you to invite new or existing iPushPull users to share your folders. To invite someone new, click on the gearwheel to the left of the Folder name – this displays the folder admin view. Now click on the Access tab.

The Access view lets you control who has access to your folder. You can:

invite new users to your folder
grant or revoke folder admin rights
temporarily suspend user access to your folder
permanently remove a user’s access to your folder

You can also see the status of your invitations and view a history of folder events.

To invite one or more users to your folder, enter their email addresses (separated by commas) into the Invite field at the top of the page. You can add a custom message if you like. When you click the Invite button we will email an invitation to them. If they accept it they will be granted access to the folder and any pages you have given them access to. They can also reject the invitation if they want to. You’ll be able to check their progress in the Access History log on the right of the page.

If you have questions or comments, please contact support@ipushpull.com