Financial Services IT
IT Services for Financial Services — Security and Compliance Built In
Financial services firms operate under some of the strictest regulatory scrutiny in any industry. Your IT environment isn't just infrastructure — it's audit evidence. Every configuration, access log, and encryption setting will be examined by regulators.
IT Risks That Keep Financial Executives Up at Night
Regulators aren't getting more lenient. Attackers aren't getting less sophisticated. Here's what's at stake.
Regulatory Examination Pressure
SEC, FINRA, state regulators, and banking examiners are all increasing scrutiny of IT controls. The SEC's cybersecurity disclosure rules (effective December 2023) require public companies to report material incidents within four business days. Your IT environment must be audit-ready at all times.
PCI-DSS 4.0 Compliance
PCI-DSS 4.0 went into effect in March 2024 with significant new requirements including authenticated vulnerability scanning, targeted risk analysis for all controls, and enhanced logging. Many firms are still running environments built for PCI 3.2.1.
Account Takeover & Wire Fraud
Credential stuffing, phishing, and SIM-swapping attacks target financial services firms specifically because the payoff is immediate — unauthorized wire transfers, fraudulent ACH transactions, and compromised trading accounts. Financial services sees 300% more credential attacks than other sectors.
SOC 2 Audit Requirements
Your clients and partners increasingly require SOC 2 Type II reports. Meeting the Trust Services Criteria means implementing and documenting controls across security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy — then proving those controls work consistently over a 6–12 month observation period.
Data Retention & Supervision
FINRA Rules 3110 and 4511, SEC Rule 17a-4, and state recordkeeping requirements mandate specific retention periods and supervision protocols for electronic communications. Your email, messaging, and file systems must support immutable archiving and supervisory review workflows.
How BrightWorks IT Serves Financial Services Firms
Multi-Framework Compliance
We map your IT controls to PCI-DSS 4.0, SOC 2 Trust Services Criteria, NIST CSF, and SEC/FINRA requirements simultaneously. One control set, documented once, satisfying multiple auditors. We maintain your evidence repository and coordinate directly with your auditors during examinations.
Financial-Grade Cybersecurity
FIDO2/WebAuthn phishing-resistant MFA, privileged access management, network micro-segmentation, encrypted communications, 24/7 SOC monitoring with financial-specific threat intelligence, and automated response playbooks for account takeover and wire fraud attempts.
Compliant Communication Archiving
We configure email archiving with WORM (Write Once Read Many) compliance, supervision review workflows, and retention policies that satisfy SEC Rule 17a-4 and FINRA requirements. This covers email, Teams messages, and other electronic communications your regulators require you to retain.
Business Continuity & DR
Financial regulators require documented BCPs with tested failover. We build and test your disaster recovery environment, document RTO and RPO for each critical system, and conduct tabletop exercises annually so your team knows exactly what to do when systems go down.
Financial Services IT by the Numbers
Financial Services IT Solutions
Managed IT Services
Infrastructure management with SLAs that meet financial services uptime requirements and audit expectations.
Learn More About Managed IT ServicesCybersecurity
Phishing-resistant MFA, PAM, micro-segmentation, and 24/7 SOC monitoring with financial threat intelligence.
Learn More About CybersecurityCompliance Services
PCI-DSS 4.0, SOC 2 Type II, SEC/FINRA readiness, and multi-framework control mapping.
Learn More About Compliance ServicesBackup & DR
BCP-compliant disaster recovery with tested failover, documented RTOs, and annual tabletop exercises.
Learn More About Backup & DRCloud & Microsoft 365
Compliant cloud environments with WORM archiving, DLP policies, and supervisory review.
Learn More About Cloud & Microsoft 365vCIO & IT Strategy
Technology roadmaps that account for regulatory changes, examination schedules, and firm growth.
Learn More About vCIO & IT Strategy"When our FINRA examiner asked about our cybersecurity controls, we had answers for every question — because BrightWorks IT had already prepared the documentation. That kind of preparedness is worth its weight in gold."
Financial Services IT — Frequently Asked Questions
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