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

60 www. intelligentfin. tech