Industry
Offensive Security for Financial Services.
Banks, fintechs and financial institutions hold what attackers want most: money, customer data and the systems that move both. CovertSwarm attacks your whole organization the way they would, across digital, social and physical vectors, so you know what holds before they find out.
THE THREAT.
What would an attacker take from you first?
Few sectors are tested as often as yours. Regulators, auditors, pen testers and your own teams all report what they found inside the scope they were given. None of them tell you what a motivated attacker would take, or how fast.
When it goes wrong in financial services, it goes wrong in public. Money leaves accounts, customers lose access to theirs, and the disclosure clock starts. Your board doesn’t need another report. It needs proof of where you really stand.
They want to move money.
Payment flows, account takeover, a changed bank detail on a supplier invoice. Attackers go where the payout is, and one approved transfer is enough.
They want your data.
Customer records, credentials, deal information. It gets sold, used for fraud or held to ransom, and every record brings a notification, a regulator and a headline.
They want you offline.
Payments, trading and online banking are services your customers cannot go without. Take them down and an attacker gets paid without stealing a thing.
We attack the paths to your crown jewels.
Real attackers don’t pick a system and stop. They chain a helpdesk call, a misconfigured API and a forgotten admin account until they reach the thing that pays. The Swarm works the same way.
Payments and core systems
Core banking APIs, payment rails, trading and settlement platforms. We test whether an attacker who gets inside can change where money goes, and whether anyone would notice.
Customer-facing apps and APIs
Mobile banking, online portals, onboarding and login flows. We go after session handling, access controls and API logic, the routes to account takeover and fraud at scale.
Cloud and infrastructure
Cloud tenancies, identity and access, internal networks. We look for the misconfiguration or excess privilege that turns one foothold into the whole estate.
People and processes
Service desks, onboarding, payment approvals, executive assistants. We test the moment someone decides to trust a caller, an email or a request that looks routine.
Branches, offices and data centers
Front doors, server rooms, badge readers and the staff who hold doors open. We test whether someone can walk in, plug in and walk out.
Suppliers and partners
Fintech integrations, outsourced providers and the shared access that comes with them. We test the routes into your organization that run through someone else’s.
We know that real attack surfaces don’t come in neat categories. If yours doesn’t fit above, tell us what you’re working with.
The only way to be confident is to face a real attacker.
We become the threat. CovertSwarm gives your bank, fintech, or payments firm a team of elite ethical hackers, augmented by agentic tools, that thinks, acts, and strikes like a real attacker.
Your Swarm attacks your organization using digital, physical and social methods. We find, chain and exploit weaknesses in your payment flows, customer accounts and vendor access before a real attacker does. Then we show you how to fix them.
You’ll know exactly where you stand, with proof for your board, your regulator, and yourself. Over 100 CISOs subscribe to CovertSwarm. Are you ready?
Let’s find out.
Constant pressure.
We attack every route to your crown jewels: a call to your service desk, a stranger at a branch door, a weak mobile banking API. Like a real attacker, we stay fixed on an objective, all within safe boundaries agreed in your Attack Thesis.
Continuous attack cycles. No fixed scopes.
Vendors, products and staff change between annual pen tests. Our attacks run in cycles, not on a fixed schedule, and keep pace. So does your evidence: proof of what held and what broke, every cycle, not one report a year. It complements your annual pen test and supports what examiners ask for.
Human experts, augmented by AI.
The Swarm is a team of elite ethical hackers. Agentic tools map your endpoints and third-party connections fast, so humans spend their time chaining weaknesses. You get direct access to the team attacking your brand via Slack.
How it works for financial services
Your subscription starts with your Attack Thesis: what matters most, and what adversaries would target first.
It starts with what an attacker would want from you: the payment approval chain, the customer onboarding flow, the trading platform, the board pack.
We agree the objectives and guardrails before anything runs.
Recon
We gather intelligence about your organization, and prepare to attack key objectives, using both open-source and agentic methods.
New assets enter scope as they emerge.
Qualified findings, not a stream of alerts.
Last cycle's findings direct the next.
OSINT + Agentic reconnaissance
Attack
Based on intelligence or strategic goals, we build and execute custom Attack Plans. We chain weaknesses and exploit every route.
Custom built plans target your actual risk
Chained across digital, physical and social
Led by humans with agentic capability
Point the Swarm at your priorities
Remediate
We notify your team about discovered risks in real-time and provide guided remediation. Get evidence of what held, and what needs work.
You're notified while the risk is live
Guidance in Slack and Jira
Findings inform the next attack cycle
Direct access to the Swarm
Want to know what an attacker would find, before your examiners ask?
What a Finding Looks Like
Example: Fintech onboarding finding
Critical
Finding
Starting from a standard employee laptop, a Swarm operator used predictable email formats and a shared temporary onboarding password to map more than 300 accounts and log in to an inactive admin account.
Impact
Over 90% of employee passwords cracked. A routine onboarding shortcut became a route to control of the whole company.
Remediation
Issue unique, expiring temporary passwords with a forced change at first login, and remove dormant admin accounts.
Board impact
A new-starter process, not a technology failure, opened the door. No single control was broken; together they gave an attacker the company.
Technical impact
A predictable username format let the operator enumerate 300+ accounts, then password-spray the shared onboarding default. A dormant admin account still accepted it. Admin access exposed stored password hashes, and over 90% were cracked offline.
Want the full picture?
The full range of offensive security the Swarm runs: every discipline, how they connect, and what each one tests.
No form fill required.
Proof your examiners and auditors can see.
Regulators no longer accept "we tested last year." They want to see that you know your risk and act on it. Every Swarm cycle produces board-ready evidence of what was attacked, what held and what was fixed, in a record that builds over the year.
The Swarm is CREST accredited, the standard your auditors recognize, and trusted by financial institutions held to the strictest testing regimes. Your program gets the same rigor every cycle, not once a year.
| Obligation | What it asks for | How the Swarm supports it |
|---|---|---|
| NYDFS Part 500 | Covered entities run penetration testing at least annually and report qualifying incidents within 72 hours. | Continuous attack evidence that goes beyond the annual test, plus findings your team has already fixed. |
| SEC cybersecurity disclosure | Public companies disclose material incidents on Form 8-K within four business days of determining materiality, and describe risk management annually. | Evidence of how cyber risk is identified and tested, to support the annual description. |
| GLBA Safeguards rule | Non-bank financial institutions run annual penetration testing and regular vulnerability assessments, unless they monitor continuously. | Continuous offensive testing across digital, social and physical. |
| PCI DSS | Penetration testing of the cardholder data environment. | Attack paths toward payment data tested every cycle. |
| SOC 2 and ISO 27001 | Evidence of control testing for audits. | Dated, cycle-by-cycle findings and remediation. |
Stories from the Swarm
These stories are real, but the names are deeply redacted. We'll tell you how we uncovered the threats no one else could see, and why constant cyber attack is the best way to outpace cyber threats.
Become a story well told. Contact us to discuss how Constant Cyber Attack™ will help you outpace cyber threats.
Frequently Asked Questions
Red teaming for financial services is an attack on your institution by ethical hackers who act like real adversaries, with a real objective such as moving money or reaching customer data. Unlike a scoped test, it chains weaknesses across systems, people and physical sites to show what an attacker could actually achieve.
A penetration test checks selected systems at one point in time; continuous red teaming attacks your whole organization in ongoing cycles. New products, integrations and staff changes are tested as they happen, not a year later.
Yes, it can support them by providing continuous, documented offensive testing and remediation evidence. It complements rather than replaces your formal annual penetration test, so confirm scope with your compliance team.
No. Every attack runs within guardrails agreed in your Attack Thesis, and services your customers depend on are protected from disruption.
All three. The Swarm attacks digital, social and physical routes, because real attackers move between a phishing email, a service desk call and an unlocked door.
You get an attacker's view of your business at no cost. We discuss your organization and priorities and create a first Attack Thesis, with no access to your systems required.
Looking for something specific?
Talk to us. We'd love to hear from you.
Stop testing.
Start knowing.
You'll know exactly where you stand, and you'll be able to prove it. To your board, your regulator, and yourself.
Transform to a proactive, continuous offensive security program
Your budget is aimed at the risk that matters, not the one you were handed
You show the board what security prevented, not a request for more
Security clears the way for the business to move faster
You enter the boardroom in command
It starts with a 30-minute Attack Discovery call.
No access to your systems required.