Build the fraud rules, KYC checks, and breach playbooks that stop a fintech from losing customer money and its banking licence.
The moment your product touches customer money, you become a target. Fraudsters probe your signup flow, attackers hijack accounts to drain balances, and money launderers test whether your controls actually work — and one missed control can mean stolen funds, a regulator’s fine, or a bank partner cutting you off. This is the defence side of fintech: how to protect a money-moving product, not how to build the ledger underneath it. You’ll work the full program — threat-modeling the pathways money can leave your system, building KYC (Know Your Customer) identity checks and AML (Anti-Money Laundering) transaction monitoring, defending against ATO (account takeover) with step-up prompts and 2FA (two-factor authentication), and securing card, ACH, wire, and crypto payment rails to PCI (Payment Card Industry) standards. Every task pairs an explicit recommendation — what to do and why regulators expect it — with a hands-on hack exercise against your own sandbox. Anchored in real incidents at Robinhood, Coinbase, and Synapse, and the practices at Stripe, Plaid, Wise, and Block. Pick one of five capstones, from a Year-1 security roadmap to an incident-response playbook.
Built by Lakshya Kumar
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Use STRIDE, attack trees, and abuser stories to map the money pathways an attacker or insider could exploit — before they do.
Build KYC identity tiers, AML transaction monitoring, OFAC screening, and the account-takeover defences that stop hijacked logins.
Tokenize card data for PCI-DSS scope, cut wire fraud and business email compromise, and secure crypto custody and payment incidents.
Classify sensitive data, encrypt it at rest and in transit with KMS and HSM, and answer deletion and data-access requests on the clock.
Lock down production access, keep tamper-evident audit logs, and run the disaster-recovery and incident cycle regulators want to see.
Assess vendors and BaaS partners, tighten OAuth scopes, and manage the concentration risk that turns one supplier failure into yours.
Wire SAST gates plus dependency and secrets scanning into your pipeline, then run bug bounty, pentest, and red-team cycles.
Design security UX customers understand, run phishing drills, buy the right cyber insurance, and communicate calmly when a crisis hits.
Turn scattered controls into a funded program with board reporting, pass regulator exams and M&A diligence, and reach pre-IPO maturity.
Complete all modules, then submit the required number of capstone projects. Each must earn a passing rating from an admin reviewer.
For a specific fintech (real or hypothetical: payments, neobank, lending, crypto exchange), produce a 5-10 page Year-1 security roadmap. Cover: applicable regulations, SOC 2 + PCI timeline, organisation structure (CISO + first 2 hires), top 5 metrics, top 10 risks, vendor strategy, IR readiness. Review with a peer.
I am learning product security and financial system security at the CISO / security PM level — security as a product feature, threat modeling for financial products, KYC/AML/OFAC/sanctions, account takeover defence, payments security (cards + PCI-DSS, ACH, wires, BEC, crypto rails), customer data protection (encryption + classification + retention + DSAR), banking-grade operations (change management + audit logs + IR), vendor + supply chain risk (BaaS partners + concentration risk), security engineering (SDLC + SAST + bug bounty + pentest), people + trust (security UX + customer education + phishing), and the long-game of programs + board reporting + regulator exams + IPO readiness. Help me work through the actual practices at Stripe, Plaid, Wise, Coinbase, Block, with reference to PCI-DSS v4, SOC 2, NYDFS DFS-500, FFIEC, GDPR, and real fintech incidents.
Pick a payment use-case (e-commerce, P2P transfer, subscription, B2B AR/AP). Produce a 5-10 page security design: card flow + tokenization + PCI scope, ACH controls (if applicable), wire transfer controls (if applicable), fraud rules, IR playbooks. Walk one runbook end-to-end with a peer.
Design: KYC tiers (basic / enhanced / premium) with regulatory basis, AML rule set (top 10 rules + patterns), OFAC screening cadence, ATO defence layers, account-recovery workflow. Implement one component (e.g., AML rule, ATO step-up, recovery workflow) in a sandbox + walk through with a peer.
Produce a 20-30 page security program plan for your fintech (Year-1 + Year-2 + 3-year), with milestones + owners + budget. Plus a 1-page (with 4-page appendix) quarterly board update template using your actual metrics. Review with CISO mentor or board advisor.
Build an end-to-end IR + Crisis Comms Playbook: severity levels, on-call, decision tree, regulator notification matrix (NYDFS, SEC, GDPR), pre-approved customer communication templates, post-mortem template. Run a 90-minute tabletop exercise + document gaps + ship 3 fixes within 30 days.
Card data security standard.