With financial institutions facing rising cyberthreats and regulatory scrutiny, digital trust is more critical than ever. Peter Proud explores how financial leaders can integrate security into their digital strategies—protecting data, enabling innovation and turning compliance into a competitive advantage.
With financial institutions handling vast amounts of sensitive data, how can business leaders ensure digital trust remains a priority in an era of increasing cyberthreats and regulatory scrutiny?
There’s been an undoubtable shift in the cyber-landscape. The old playbook of just focussing on perimeter defences like firewalls and network security doesn’t cut it anymore. What we’re finding is that attackers have become smarter—they’re not just hammering at your banking systems; they’re looking for broader targets like your public websites and customer portals. It’s shocking how many organisations still treat their content management system (CMS) as a low-risk system when it’s actually become a prime attack vector.
The key is bringing your IT security teams and marketing teams to the same table. When I was at Microsoft, I spent years listening to the world’s largest enterprises struggle with this exact problem. Financial leaders need to champion security that spans everything from core systems to customer-facing content.
The institutions that will thrive are those implementing comprehensive protection across their entire digital footprint, not just checking regulatory boxes. When you get this right, security transforms from a compliance headache into a genuine business advantage that builds customer trust and drives growth.
As FinTechs push the boundaries of innovation, how can organisations strike the right balance between delivering seamless digital experiences and maintaining robust security standards—without stifling agility?
At Forrit, we spotted this massive chasm between IT priorities and marketing needs. IT teams are laser-focused on security and scalability, while marketing folks need speed and flexibility. What we’ve learned is that your platform architecture decision makes all the difference. Most SaaS solutions give you that quick win on deployment, but they’re multi-tenant by design, which creates administrative burdens for regulated industries. You can take a different approach with a PaaS solution. These tools give organisations their own secure environment while still enabling marketing teams to move fast.
When security is baked into your platform rather than bolted on as an afterthought, it actually enables innovation rather than blocking it. Steve Jobs said you can get a lot wrong if you get the product right—and in financial services, getting security right in your digital channels is non-negotiable if you want to innovate without introducing unacceptable risk.
With financial services firms more reliant than ever on their digital presence, how should businesses approach web estate security as a fundamental part of their risk management strategy?
There’s a dangerous blind spot in how many financial institutions approach digital risk. They’ll spend millions protecting their core banking systems but treat their websites as lower-priority assets. It’s a bit like putting a state-of-the-art security system in your house but leaving the garden shed wide open—and that shed happens to have a tunnel to your living room. This disconnect happens because website security often falls into a no-man’s-land between IT and marketing departments.
The stakes have skyrocketed with DORA and NIS2. Executive teams need to understand that website security breaches aren’t just IT problems anymore—they have serious regulatory, reputational and even personal consequences. At Forrit, we’ve taken a proactive approach by building a solution that strengthens both security and resilience. By integrating capabilities such as Azure Defender, Azure Front Door and Microsoft Sentinel, we ensure advanced threat detection, protection and response. At the same time, features like Azure Traffic Manager and autoscaling enhance resilience and performance, providing load balancing. This is delivered through an intuitive interface that empowers marketing teams without compromising security or compliance. Financial firms need to stop seeing website security as a separate concern and start treating it as an integral part of their overall risk management approach.
Many of your clients operate in highly regulated sectors such as insurance and banking — how can business leaders turn compliance obligations into a competitive advantage rather than a burden?
Too many organisations view compliance with regulations like DORA and NIS2 as a painful checkbox exercise when it should really be seen as an opportunity to differentiate. We had success with our clients in the banking and insurance sectors because we delivered a solution that not only met their stringent compliance requirements but actually made their teams more effective.
It’s all about the approach. We put the customer at the core of everything we built, collected their feedback and honed the product. And that’s how financial institutions should handle compliance—start with customer needs, build security that protects them across all touchpoints and make it seamless. When clients see you genuinely protecting their data rather than just ticking regulatory boxes, it builds tremendous trust. The same applies to compliance—those who go beyond minimum requirements to build truly resilient, secure platforms will win customer confidence and market share while their competitors struggle with patchwork solutions and regulatory headaches.
The rise of AI-driven cyberthreats means financial firms must evolve their defences. How should leaders be thinking about AI’s role in both defending and attacking digital infrastructures?
AI is dramatically changing the game in cybersecurity. The threats are getting smarter and more automated by the day. Marketing teams are rapidly adopting AI tools—often without fully understanding the security implications—while attackers are using similar technologies to spot vulnerabilities faster than human defenders can respond. It’s like an arms race that’s accelerating by the month.
We’ve built our solution on top of the hundreds of billions Microsoft invested in Azure, leveraging their AI capabilities for security monitoring, threat detection and automated responses. We’ve engineered it so you can’t see where Microsoft’s products finish and ours start. This integration is crucial because standalone AI tools often create new vulnerabilities if they’re not properly secured themselves. Financial institutions need to take a similar approach—implement AI-driven security that can detect anomalies and respond in real-time, but make sure it’s built on a rock-solid foundation. The winners will be those who harness AI to strengthen their security posture while ensuring their AI implementations don’t become new attack vectors. It’s about working smarter, not just harder, in this new AI-powered security landscape.
