Roadmaps Security roadmaps Specialised and emerging
Secure banks, fintechs and payment systems: card data and PCI DSS, payment fraud, open banking APIs, financial regulation such as DORA, and the threat actors who target money directly.
Estimated time: 15–27 months · At about 10 hours a week.
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Card networks, bank transfers, real-time payments, SWIFT and the systems behind them. You cannot protect a flow you do not understand.
Organised crime, banking trojans, business email compromise, insider fraud and state actors targeting payment systems. Study the big heists.
The card industry standard for anyone storing, processing or transmitting card data. Learn its requirements, scope and the idea of reducing scope.
Central banks, financial conduct regulators and bodies such as the FFIEC publish security expectations with real enforcement. Know yours.
The EU's Digital Operational Resilience Act sets ICT risk, incident reporting, testing and third-party rules for financial entities. Similar regimes exist elsewhere.
Fraud teams, anti-money-laundering and security overlap heavily. Learn where each sits and how they share signals.
Segment the cardholder environment, tokenise to shrink scope, meet each requirement with evidence, and work with a QSA. Scope reduction is the smart path.
PIN handling, key management and tokenisation run on payment HSMs under strict standards. Learn the key hierarchies and the rules.
Regulation such as PSD2 opens bank APIs to third parties. Secure them with strong customer authentication, OAuth profiles such as FAPI and careful consent.
Strong customer authentication, device binding, passkeys and risk-based step-up protect accounts. Balance security with usability or customers will leave.
SWIFT's Customer Security Programme sets mandatory controls for institutions on the network. Learn them; attestation is required annually.
Legacy cores, mainframes and trading platforms need their own controls: privileged access, change control, integrity and low-latency monitoring.
ICT risk framework, incident classification and reporting, threat-led penetration testing, third-party registers and exit plans. Build the programme and the evidence.
Frameworks such as TIBER-EU run intelligence-led red team tests against live systems under strict control. Learn how they are scoped and governed.
Authorised push payment fraud, card-not-present fraud and account takeover need transaction monitoring, behavioural signals and customer warnings. Work with the fraud team.
Sector sharing bodies such as FS-ISAC give early warning on campaigns against finance. Join and use them.
Regulators allow cloud with conditions: concentration risk, exit plans, audit rights and data location. Design cloud use to satisfy them.
Financial regulators require fast, structured incident reports with strict deadlines. Build the classification and reporting process into incident response.
Examinations, findings and ongoing dialogue with supervisors are part of the job. Be transparent, organised and credible.
Balance regulation, fraud, resilience, product speed and cost across the institution, and report it to the board in risk terms.
Fintechs must meet bank-grade regulation while shipping fast. Build security into the platform from the start and get the licences right.
Financial institutions are attacked because that is where the money is, and regulated because that is where the trust is. Security here means protecting payment systems and customer money, meeting dense regulation, and defending against some of the most capable criminal groups.
The field covers card and payment security under PCI DSS, the security of banking platforms and open banking APIs, resilience regulation such as DORA, fraud and financial crime overlap, and the specific controls regulators expect. It rewards people who understand both security and how money moves.
Finance has the strictest security regulation and the most motivated attackers. Banks, insurers, payment firms and fintechs all need people who can meet regulatory expectations while keeping up with fraud and intrusion techniques aimed at money.
Take them in roughly this order. Costs and details for the ones marked with a link are on the Certifications page.
A common progression. Titles vary between companies.
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