This whitepaper delves into the security and privacy challenges that are core to Fintech companies and explains how one should go about formulating the security strategy for the Fintech initiative. It also brings into perspective, the various technical aspects of the secured environment from a Fintech point-of- view.

1. How To Secure
Your Fintech Solution?
HOW TO SECURE
YOUR FINTECH SOLUTION?
A Whitepaper by RapidValue

2. How To Secure
Your Fintech Solution?
index
01 Executive Summary
02 Security and Privacy Challenges
03 Formulating the Security Process
05 Building and Releasing a Secured
Solution : The Technical Aspects
07 Conclusion
©RapidValue Solutions
08 About RapidValue
07 Author

3. How To Secure
Your Fintech Solution?
How often do we hear questions like “What
is the guarantee that my account will not be
accessed maliciously, if I transact through
your platform?” or “Does your application
provide enough security for my personal data?”
Fintech has brought in a huge disruption in the
way the entire financial industry runs across
the segments - be it banking, insurance, funds
management or transfers and payments. We
have seen emergence of newer technologies
and platforms that facilitate the processes across
the above segments. It is also true that with the
introduction of newer technologies, uncertainties
and vulnerabilities are getting exposed. These
vulnerabilities get compounded, considering the
kind of sensitive data that is core to the financial
industry. The valuable data in turn makes security
as one of the most critical aspects to be looked
Executive
Summary
into from a Fintech company perspective and
should never be ignored. In fact, with the increase
in the number of connected buyers and sellers
across the globe, this will gather more importance
for the success of Fintech initiatives.
This whitepaper delves into the security and
privacy challenges that are core to Fintech
companies and explains how one should
go about formulating the security strategy
for the Fintech initiative. It also brings into
perspective, the various technical aspects of
the secured environment from a Fintech point-
of-view.
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©RapidValue Solutions
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How to
Secure your
Fintech Solution?

4. How to Secure
your Fintech Solution?
Security and Privacy Challenges
The increase in the number of services that are
going online has subsequently increased the
amount of data available in the digital formats.
Data in the digital format does ease out the
analysis process and enhances the insights
from the same. Thus, helping to provide more
customized and user - friendly services. But
this also brings in data ubiquity along with the
concern regarding data security. The data available
includes a lot of personal information. Protection
of this data and allowing access to this data in
a secured manner are the biggest challenges
that are being faced by the Fintech companies.
With the seamless data sharing between new
and traditional financial partners, the enforcement
of stronger mechanisms for customer consent
for data sharing brings in a new challenge.
They should implement ways for data life cycle
management in order to ensure that data is
not misused or exploited by any of the entities.
These partnerships also bring in the challenge
of data ownership. The Fintech companies
must overcome these by combining strong
technical capabilities backed by legal measures.
The advent of devices like mobile phones as
authentication devices through biometric
use, onetime passwords (OTPs) and code-
generating has brought in another problem
for the Fintech companies which is that of
managing the digital identities of individuals
and enterprises alike. With the reduced reliance
on conventional authentication mechanisms
such as passwords and PINs, it becomes easier
to misuse the data. The above challenges
force to revisit conventional and traditional
security models. ASecurity goals, measures and
architecture for Fintech companies need to be
redesigned taking into account these trends.
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©RapidValue Solutions
How to
Secure your
Fintech Solution?

5. Security
Process
Security
Evangelist
Data
Protection
Risk
Monitoring
Frequent
Audits
Training
How to Secure
your Fintech Solution?
Formulating the Security Process
Even before embarking on the development journey, it is essential to keep in mind the security concerns and
taking the steps in the right direction. Now that we know the security challenges that are faced by the Fintech
companies, let’s go ahead and see the processes that need to be followed in order to mitigate those risks.
Employ a Security Evangelist
It is crucial to have someone identified at the
beginning who will provide the necessary
measures related to security. It is imperative
that everyone in the organization is aware of
the fact that security is a process and everyone
needs to play the appropriate role for the
same. Thus, the first step should be to select
an individual who will take up the leadership
role and communicate effectively, the need
to propagate security practices across the
organization.
1. Ascertain and implement data protection
obligations
There has to be absolute clarity on different
laws and regulations that the business needs
to comply with. Any non-compliance thereby,
leading to personal data breaches have
the potential of ruining the entire goodwill
and reputation of the business, leave alone
any legal ramifications. Therefore, it is of
utmost importance to understand the legal
security aspects, take appropriate steps
and implement them from the beginning.
2.
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©RapidValue Solutions
How to
Secure your
Fintech Solution?

6. How to Secure
your Fintech Solution?
Training
After considering the above processes and
procedures, the organization needs to
make sure that employees are well trained
in the security aspects. To stay ahead in
the secured environment game, the staff
needs to have the requisite knowledge and
skillsets required for their specific roles. In
this case, a one-size-fits-all solution might
not work. The company should pay heed to
the fact that the developers and technical
staff have the right skills and that they are
informed about the latest security measures.
5.
Conduct frequent audits
The perfect utilization of the risk monitoring
system shall stem from a well-defined regular
audit, with a motivation of continuous
monitoring and vigilance of all systems for
perceived threats. The security evangelist
should be driving this initiative with
close involvement of someone from the
development team having strong knowledge
of the architecture to identify gaps and
fix them on priority. These audits should
not only be limited to the internal Fintech
systems, but also, extend to technology and
business partners. This would keep a check
on the vulnerability that arises out of the
transmission of data via insecure interfaces.
Setup internal risk monitoring mechanism
Fintech companies should at the outset only,
get a good understanding of the data assets
related to the specific business. Accordingly,
a cyber risk calculation framework should be
set to assess risks properly. This helps to get
better performance with regards to internal
security audits from an early stage when the
size of the company is smaller. It goes without
saying, if one is dedicated for a cause from the
begining, the future is likely to yield greater
results.
3.
4.
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©RapidValue Solutions
How to
Secure your
Fintech Solution?

7. How to Secure
your Fintech Solution?
Building and Releasing a Secured
Solution: The Technical Aspects
The above process, if carried out diligently,
would ensure that the company is ready to
take the plunge on the actual development of
a secure Fintech solution. There are many more
development and technical aspects of security
which help to avoid mistakes and release
a secure solution or application that won’t
succumb to the first attack. The other crucial
aspects that need to be considered are as follows.
Architecture design and code review
Even before initiating the development
procedure by writing the first line of code, one
1.
needs to design the architecture to make sure
that the security aspects are met. A balance
between convenience in development or
usage and security needs to be maintained.
In addition, once the coding is completed
there should be mandatory reviews conducted
ensuring no security loopholes exist in the
code. During the review, the team needs to
be informed about the mistakes so that they
don’t get repeated. Reviewing every line of the
code might sound tedious, but this will ensure
no errors occur.
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©RapidValue Solutions
How to
Secure your
Fintech Solution?

8. How to Secure
your Fintech Solution?
Penetration testing and proactive security
assessment
One of the most important security assurance
steps, which is often ignored, is penetration
testing. This can neither replace any of the
security tests that are mentioned above nor
does a ‘clean’ penetration test report show that
the system is perfectly secure. However this
procedure assures that the product code does
not get affected when subjected to attack.
These penetration tests should be performed
once before a new build with changes are
released.
5.
Encryption ensuring security in transmission
One of the foremost challenges in securing
the solution is related to the storage and
transmission of data across the partners.
This is a large scale issue and the answer to
this is encryption. The entire data should be
encrypted, while being transferred internally or
outside network. There is a fear that encryption
will affect the solution performance. But
this encryption could be run on a separate
dedicated server other than the core solution.
This ensures that the data is secure and the
performance does not get affected. Facebook
runs encryption in a similar way and does not
perform slow. Having SSL or HTTPS during
3.
Security testing
You need to make sure that the functional
security features testing are core to the
quality assurance testing that is being
performed. The security features are possible
to test using similar techniques as the other
features of the product. The core security
concerns for the solution should be identified,
documented well into the test plan and
should be tested without any compromise.
4.
Bug fixing : quick and efficient
Fintech companies have to react quickly to
the bugs that are being found. There should
be mechanisms which would help all teams
to work collaboratively. They should be able
to identify the bugs at the earliest, reproduce
them efficiently, fix them and prepare for
retest. Working in a DevOps setup ensures that
these happen seamlessly. It provides a holistic
view of the entire software delivery chain or the
product life cycle and takes into account shared
services. This further, facilitates continuous
development, integration and delivery
inherently thereby, building a quality product.
2.
transmission is not enough. The entire core
product: every line of data, every layer of the
product, and the lines of code should be
obfuscated to make the transmission secure.
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©RapidValue Solutions
How to
Secure your
Fintech Solution?

9. How To Secure
Your Fintech Solution?
Conclusion
The above processes and technical considerations might help get the Fintech company a security
compliant product or solution. Having said that, you need to keep in mind the complicated,
varied and dynamic environment in which the Fintech companies operate. Therefore,
security attacks are almost inevitable. This industry is exposed to threats that can detect the
limitations which exist within the ecosystem. Leaving aside the financial losses, these attacks
are capable of ruining the goodwill of the company and hampering the business permanently.
It becomes extremely important for Fintech companies to focus on security as it is one of the
most essential aspects and a core feature of their solution. This should be intertwined with the
operations from the beginning and should not be added at the hindsight or considered an
afterthought of any eventuality. This is the only way to ensure the Fintech companies’ progress
and that they are able to confidently play their part in this digital-driven economy seamlessly.
Author
SOUMYODEEP BHATTACHARJEE
Director - Presales
RapidValue
If you’d like to know more about Fintech Solutions,
please reach out to us at
contactus@rapidvaluesolutions.com
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©RapidValue Solutions
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How to
Secure your
Fintech Solution?

10. How To Secure
Your Fintech Solution?
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©RapidValue Solutions April, 2018