The risk of cyber attacks in telecommuting is a constant concern of the banking industry, not only in Vietnam but also around the world. A system hacked through ransomware, phishing emails, malware, etc. will disrupt business operations, cause data loss and affect customer confidence as well as the bank's competitiveness on the market. 

In addition, at the end of 2020, ABBank has officially conducted centralized transactions on UPCoM stock exchange, marking its new step forward to develop as a transparent and sustainable public company. Mr. Tran Viet Thang, Director of Banking Technology of ABBank, said: "In addition to targeting revenue and profit growth, ABBank has also increased its investment in the digital transformation campaign."

Mr. Tran Viet Thang, Director of Banking Technology of ABBank.

As the fourth wave of Covid-19 is sweeping through, ABBank has quickly digitalized its workplace with the whole suite of Microsoft 365 solutions combined with alternative presence of employees at the office to both comply with pandemic safety measures and ensure uninterrupted business operations as well as customer services. By thoroughly applying the tools of Microsoft 365, ABBank has build a modern remote collaboration environment that allows employees to share and exchange information in a safe and flexible manner, thereby significantly increasing productivity. Especially, during the social distancing, ABBank is still able to conduct periodic training activities to improve professional knowledge and skills for employees without encountering any difficulties thanks to the online collaboration application Microsoft Teams.

To enhance cyber security for all employees using the system, ABBank added Microsoft Office 365 ATP, a security solution to help the bank proactively protects the system from phishing emails in real time by providing zero-day vulnerability security services. In particular, by utilizing trillions of signals from Microsoft's smart security graph, Office 365 ATP helps to detect and prevent malicious files from intruding, copying or sharing data on Sharepoint, Teams and OneDrive. Once detected, malicious files will be placed on the "quarantine" list, so that the bank's security team can easily report and delete them from the system.

The application of technology in telecommuting has significantly increased the satisfaction of ABBank employees with the workplace. Mr. Nguyen Hai Bien, Deputy Director of Cloud Solutions and Services, CMC TS - the company that advises and deploys Microsoft 365 solutions for ABBank, said: "Right from the beginning, Microsoft Office 365 has been fully applied by ABBank. After 6 months of deployment, the percentage of users increased to over 90%, of which the rate of use and satisfaction with the Exchange application reached 96%, and 93% for Microsoft Teams."

In addition to solutions to digitalize the work environment, ABBank is also deploying Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Services (CS) at its Call Centers to improve the experience of operators across the system. Based on artificial intelligence, Dynamics 365 CS allows operators to receive customer requests from any channel, handle multiple sessions at once and interact with different applications without losing context, thereby enhancing customer experience. Dynamics 365 CS also effectively supports ABBank in making important business decisions based on the data collected.

Mr. Tran Viet Thang said: "We see that Microsoft's products are in line with ABBank's needs and direction of development. Especially, with the rapid change of technology today, Microsoft's prepackaged solutions make it easy for us to access to and apply technology, thus support the bank's fast and convenient digital transformation."

Thanks to the implementation of technology projects to increase customer experience and create a safe environment for telecommuting, in 2020, ABBANK was still able to ensure a stable growth with profit before tax of 1,368 billion VND, an increase of 11.3% compared to 2019.

In 2021, ABBank will continue to roll out its digital transformation strategy in both breadth and depth to expand customer service channels and streamline internal processes, aiming for profit of over 1,900 billion VND, equivalent to an increase of about 45% compared to 2020.