Innovation has reshaped financial services, enhancing customer convenience while complicating security. Mobile banking, AI-driven fraud detection, real-time payments, and cloud-based services have accelerated modernization. Features like mobile check deposits and AI-powered financial planning are now standard—but rely on cloud-native technologies that legacy security models weren’t built to protect.
Traditional banks relied on firewalls, VPNs, and Privileged Access Management (PAM) solutions designed for static environments. But these legacy tools fall short in today’s dynamic, hybrid, and multi-cloud ecosystems. As financial institutions modernize, their security strategies must evolve to match the agility and scale of their technology stacks.
Key Takeaways
- Legacy Security Models Are Outdated: Traditional firewalls, VPNs, and PAM solutions weren’t built for the cloud and fail to provide the agility needed for modern financial environments.
- Cloud & Hybrid Complexity Increases Risk: Managing access across on-prem, private/public clouds, and SaaS applications leads to inconsistent policies and security gaps.
- Traditional PAM Falls Short for Databases: Most PAM tools secure infrastructure but lack visibility and control over who accesses sensitive financial data.
- IAM Alone Isn’t Enough: Static authentication doesn’t prevent credential theft, session hijacking, or insider threats—once access is granted, there’s little control.
- Continuous Authorization is the Missing Link: Real-time access decisions based on identity, device, location, behavior, and risk ensure true Zero Trust security.
- The Path to Secure Access: Organizations must shift from static models to visibility, least privilege, real-time authorization, and compliance-driven controls.
- Financial Security Needs a Smarter Approach: Continuous Authorization dynamically adjusts access based on risk, ensuring Zero Trust is a daily reality.
Legacy Security Models Weren't Built for the Cloud
For decades, financial institutions have relied on on-prem security models: firewalls, VPNs, network segmentation, and Privileged Access Management (PAM) solutions designed for static environments, where network perimeters were well-defined.
However, when these legacy access models are lifted and shifted to the cloud, they fail to provide the agility and precision needed to secure modern financial operations, where identities are the perimeter.
Why? Because cloud environments are inherently dynamic. Workloads, identities, and access need constantly shift, making enforcing actual least-privilege access using traditional, perimeter-based controls nearly impossible. This gap between cloud adoption and access control maturity creates serious security vulnerabilities—ones that attackers are more than happy to exploit.
The Complexity of Cloud & Hybrid Environments Creates Policy Chaos
Most financial organizations now operate in a hybrid IT world, juggling:
- Legacy on-prem data centers
- Private clouds for high-performance computing, AI/ML, or fraud detection
- Public clouds and the elasticity and rapid scalability of their public application stacks
- SaaS applications like Salesforce, Workday, Microsoft 365, and managed data services like Snowflake
Each of these environments has different security controls, access policies, and identity management tools, leading to inconsistent enforcement and policy silos. This fragmentation makes it difficult—if not impossible—to enforce Zero Standing Privileges (ZSP) and Just-In-Time (JIT) access across the enterprise, increasing risk and operational friction.
Traditional PAM was Built for Servers, Not Databases
Recent breaches have increasingly targeted financial databases, exploiting weak access controls and excessive standing privileges. Attackers recognize that databases hold the most valuable assets—customer data, payment records, and proprietary trading algorithms—making them prime targets for credential theft and privilege escalation.
Financial institutions house their most valuable assets in databases, not just servers. Customer PII, payment data, trading algorithms, and regulatory records are your institution’s crown jewels. Yet, most PAM solutions implemented in financial services institutions are focused on controlling infrastructure access rather than protecting data where it resides--in databases.
The problem?
In many financial organizations, database users often rely on shared service accounts, shared credentials, and connection pools rather than individual logins. Traditional PAM solutions attempt to secure these environments by rotating passwords, but they fall short in providing visibility into who is executing queries or accessing sensitive data.
However, financial institutions require more than just credential management—they need real-time query and session-level control to mitigate risks effectively. Without fine-grained policies that enforce least privilege at the data level, these organizations remain vulnerable to insider threats, credential compromise, and compliance violations.
Over-reliance on IAM Alone Leaves a Dangerous Security Gap
Identity and Access Management (IAM) solutions have become the cornerstone of authentication strategies in financial services. Yet, they leave a glaring gap: once access is granted, there is little control over what happens next. Attackers are well aware of this limitation and actively exploit it.
IAM solutions verify identity at the point of authentication, but modern attacks rarely stop at the doorstep. Phishing campaigns, credential stuffing, and social engineering tactics continue to compromise user accounts, granting malicious actors an open door to sensitive financial data. Even legitimate users with excessive, persistent privileges pose a risk, as they may unknowingly introduce vulnerabilities or make unauthorized changes.
Consider these real-world scenarios where IAM alone fails to protect:
- Compromised Credentials: An attacker gains access to a valid user's account through a phishing attack. Once authenticated, they move laterally through the network, accessing privileged systems without further scrutiny.
- Session Hijacking: A malicious actor intercepts an active session and assumes the user's identity mid-session, executing high-risk transactions with no additional security checks.
- Insider Threats: Employees or contractors with overly broad IAM roles can access sensitive data beyond their immediate responsibilities, increasing the risk of data leaks or fraud.
To bridge this gap, financial institutions must embrace Continuous Authorization—a security approach that doesn't just authenticate at login but dynamically evaluates risk throughout the session. This means:
- Enforcing fine-grained, real-time access controls that adjust based on user behavior and environmental factors.
- Detecting and terminating high-risk sessions immediately when anomalies are detected.
- Implementing policy-based authorization that considers device health, location, time of access, and session activity in real time.
IAM is an essential security layer, but it cannot be the last line of defense. Without continuous monitoring and adaptive access control, financial institutions remain vulnerable to breaches that bypass static authentication measures. Many firms have invested heavily in Identity and Access Management (IAM) solutions like Okta, Ping, or Microsoft Entra. While these tools are great at authentication, they stop short of controlling what happens after access is granted. This is precisely where attackers thrive:
- If credentials are compromised, attackers gain full access.
- If a session is hijacked, there's no enforcement to detect the risk, terminate the session, and log the user out.
Overly broad IAM roles mean users (and attackers) often have excessive, persistent privileges.
Financial institutions must move beyond static access controls to truly achieve Zero Trust and adopt real-time, risk-based authorization.
Continuous Authorization: The Missing Link to True Zero Trust
A modern security strategy must move beyond one-time authentication and implement Continuous Authorization, where access decisions are evaluated in real-time based on the following:
- Who is accessing the system (identity verification, user behavior analysis)
- What device they are using (corporate laptop vs. unknown personal device)
- Where they are connecting from (expected location vs. an unusual IP address)
- When they are accessing it (regular work hours vs. a suspicious time of day)
- What actions are they performing (routine reporting vs. a mass data export)
This approach ensures that access is only maintained if the risk remains low. If a device is compromised, an action deviates from normal behavior, or a session suddenly changes context, access should be revoked immediately without waiting for a manual response.
The Path to a Secure Future: Implementing Continuous Authorization
Financial organizations must shift from traditional, static models to an adaptive, real-time approach to truly modernize access security. The journey can be broken down into four key phases:
- Establishing Visibility & Control
- Know exactly who has access to every critical system and why at any given moment.
- Instantly see every access approval decision and the reasoning behind it.
- Enforcing Least Privilege & Just-In-Time Access
- Ensure users only have access to what they need when they need it—no more, no less.
- Dynamically grant and revoke access based on risk factors like device trust and user behavior.
- Achieving Continuous, Context-Aware Authorization
- Detect and terminate high-risk sessions the moment a security anomaly occurs.
- Adapt access levels in real-time without relying on manual approvals.
- Security Assurance at the Board Level
- Prove to regulators, auditors, and executives that excessive permissions never exist.
- Turn security into an operational advantage, ensuring access controls protect the firm and its whole tech stack while improving efficiency and compliance.
- Introducing the Right Amount of Friction
- Achieve the right balance between enforcing least privilege and real-time controls without forcing engineers to wrestle with clunky workflows. What's needed is security that works with your team, not against it.
A Smarter Approach to Financial Security
Organizations must ensure that all critical resources—whether on-prem or in the cloud—are protected with Zero Trust security. This includes not only servers and databases but also cloud consoles, network devices, and every other system involved in financial operations. Security gaps will persist without comprehensive coverage, leaving institutions vulnerable to evolving threats.
In today's high-stakes financial environment, protecting access requires more than just passwords, VPNs, or even traditional PAM solutions. Proper security ensures access is continuously authorized and dynamically adjusted as risks evolve.
By embracing Continuous Authorization, financial institutions can move beyond outdated security models and into a future where Zero Trust is more than just a concept—it's a daily reality.
Is your organization ready to take the next step? Book a demo today!
