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Fintech Sector

Security built for regulated financial innovation.

Fintechs operate at the intersection of financial regulation and rapid product development. You're building with APIs, cloud-native infrastructure, and third-party integrations at scale, and attackers are probing every one of those components for weaknesses.

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The threat landscape

Fintechs are attractive targets at every stage of growth.

Fintech companies handle what cyber criminals want most: money and the systems that move it. From payment processors and digital wallets to lending platforms and investment apps, fintechs provide attackers with a direct path to financial fraud at scale. Unlike traditional financial institutions with decades of security investment, many fintechs are building fast and may be trading security for speed-to-market.

FCA authorisation brings regulatory obligations around operational resilience, data protection under GDPR, and compliance with PSD2 and PCI-DSS for payment institutions. A security incident is not merely a technical problem. It triggers regulatory reporting obligations, potential enforcement action, and the kind of media attention that erodes the customer trust your business depends on. As fintechs scale and take on more sensitive financial data, the attack surface grows, and so does the reward for attackers.

Key threat areas

The risks facing your platform.

API Security Vulnerabilities

APIs are the backbone of fintech products and the most common source of critical vulnerabilities. Broken authentication, excessive data exposure, and injection flaws in APIs can enable account takeover and data exfiltration at scale.

Regulatory & FCA Compliance

FCA-regulated firms must demonstrate operational resilience and adequate security controls. A breach that triggers regulatory scrutiny can result in enforcement action, public censure, and loss of authorisation.

Mobile App Attack Surface

Consumer-facing mobile applications are reverse-engineered by attackers looking for hardcoded credentials, insecure data storage, and authentication bypasses that can be exploited at scale.

Cyber risks

Threats specific to the fintech sector.

Broken API Authentication
APIs that accept weak tokens, lack rate limiting, or fail to validate permissions properly can allow attackers to access any customer account without authentication.
Third-Party Integration Risk
Open banking, payment provider, and KYC integrations introduce dependencies on external parties. A vulnerability in a third-party API can compromise your customers' data and funds.
Mobile Application Vulnerabilities
Insecure data storage, weak certificate pinning, and client-side business logic flaws in mobile apps can be exploited on compromised or jailbroken devices.
Account Takeover via Credential Stuffing
Attackers use lists of breached credentials to automate login attempts against fintech platforms. Without strong MFA and anomaly detection, accounts are at risk.
Insider Threats in High-Growth Teams
Rapid hiring creates risks around access provisioning, offboarding, and the management of privileged access to production databases and payment systems.
Cloud Misconfiguration
Cloud-native infrastructure can be misconfigured to expose databases, storage buckets, or admin interfaces publicly. These risks are often introduced quickly and discovered slowly.
Social Engineering Targeting Customer Support
Social engineering attacks targeting customer service agents can bypass technical controls. Attackers impersonate customers to gain account access or change authentication credentials.
DDoS Targeting Trading or Payment Platforms
Distributed denial-of-service attacks against trading platforms or payment APIs can cause financial losses, SLA breaches, and reputational damage during peak periods.
FAQ

Frequently asked questions.

Why do fintechs need specialist penetration testing?
Fintechs face a unique combination of threats driven by API-heavy architectures, rapid release cycles, and regulatory scrutiny from the FCA. Generic security assessments often miss the business logic flaws and API vulnerabilities that are most commonly exploited in financial platforms. A specialist tester understands how to chain authentication bypasses, payment flow manipulation, and privilege escalation in ways that reflect real-world fintech attacks.
How does penetration testing help with FCA compliance?
The FCA expects regulated firms to demonstrate operational resilience and adequate security controls. A CREST-accredited penetration test provides independent, evidence-based assurance that your platform has been tested against real-world attack techniques. The resulting report can be shared with your compliance team, auditors, and the regulator to demonstrate that you are proactively identifying and remediating security weaknesses.
Will testing disrupt our live platform?
No. We scope every engagement carefully and agree testing windows, exclusions, and escalation procedures before any work begins. Testing is conducted in a controlled manner to avoid service disruption. Where possible, we can also test against developer, sandbox, or staging environments to eliminate any risk to production systems. For production environments, we work with your engineering team to ensure that testing does not affect availability or customer experience.
How often should a fintech conduct penetration testing?
At a minimum, annually and after any significant platform change such as a new API release, payment integration, or infrastructure migration. Many fintechs on rapid release cycles benefit from more frequent testing, particularly of new features and API endpoints. PCI DSS requires annual penetration testing and quarterly vulnerability scanning as a baseline for payment-handling organisations.
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Ready to secure your fintech platform?

Speak to a CREST-certified consultant. We'll scope your engagement and provide a fixed-price proposal, with no obligation.

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