By Anders Askåsen, Director of Product Marketing, Omada
The financial sector operates under intense regulatory oversight, with stringent requirements designed to uphold the integrity of global financial systems. This level of scrutiny extends deeply into cybersecurity, where financial institutions must navigate a complex web of compliance frameworks while defending against an evolving threat landscape. Cybercriminals, often driven by financial incentives, continuously refine their tactics—leveraging social engineering and large-scale data breaches to exploit vulnerabilities and weaponize using ransomware.
These tactics can jeopardize customer trust, damage reputation and result in financial loss and regulatory consequences. Over the past 20 years, this industry has endured more than 20,000 cyberattacks, at a cost of $12 billion. 65% of financial institutions experienced at least one cyberattack in 2024.
Compliance with regulatory obligations is critical in the financial services industry. Central to mitigating these risks – as emphasized by most major security frameworks –
is the effective management of digital identities and access rights within organizations.
The complex compliance landscape
The complexity of global regulations like GDPR, SOX, NIS2 and DORA is reshaping how organizations approach compliance. Today’s financial services organizations must comply with an increasingly expanding slate of regulations from state and national governing bodies, including industry-specific regulations, some of which differ across jurisdictions. They need access control for remote and hybrid work scenarios, which adds to the complexity because that includes managing user access across numerous resources and clouds.
This creates additional access points, increasing the threat of unauthorized access and data breaches. Limited resources further complicate compliance efforts, as security teams must manage all these compliance obligations without additional staff or funding.
The Network and Information Security Directive (NIS2) is an expanded European Union cybersecurity directive that came into force last year. It expands the scope of cybersecurity requirements to cover more sectors, including energy, transport, healthcare and digital services, and expanding to the wider supply chain delivering services to these organizations. Under this directive, and the transposed national legislations, organizations that operate essential services and critical infrastructure must abide by standards designed to improve supply chain security and report all security incidents. NIS2 brings more severe sanctions for non-compliance, holding top management and board of directors personally liable.
The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) is another major EU regulation, focused on financial services organizations. This law ensures that such organizations have the resilience to overcome the disruptions that cyber threats may cause. Under DORA, finserv companies must do penetration testing, strengthen management of third-party risk, and make sure Information and Communication Technology (ICT) service providers maintain stringent security protocols. DORA emphasizes incident reporting – and promotes information sharing – so financial institutions must promptly inform authorities about major ICT incidents.
Read More : Protecting Private Equity Firms in a Complex Threat Landscape
How IGA assists in compliance
IGA helps with compliance in four specific ways:
- Identity Lifecycle Management (IGA). Financial firms need a strong, modern IGA tool to manage onboarding and offboarding efficiently, as well as changes in employee roles, while remaining secure and compliant. IGA ensures the assignment of necessary permissions by enabling companies to grant, change and revoke access according to user roles and responsibilities.
- Entitlement Governance and Risk Management. It’s critical to maintain control once access is given; otherwise, unnecessary permissions can cause Compliance failures or security breaches. If there is no system that tracks access, identity managers may opt to grant permissions off the cuff to prevent operational delays. This can lead to overprivileged users, which increases compliance risk. In supporting access reviews based on role, automatically rescinding out-of-date permissions and imposing least privilege access, today’s IGA solutions reduce this risk.
- Business Workflows & Process Automation. Delays and inconsistencies are inevitabilities when workflows are manual. An automated workflow ensures an auditable, consistent process for requests, approvals and removals. Certification campaigns are also possible via automated workflows, in which Identity managers review and validate access rights from time to time.
- Audit & Compliance Tracking. For regulations like GDPR and DORA that require user access activities to be tracked, auditability is a significant compliance requirement. IGA tools offer a centralized audit trail that collects every action related to access and identity.
Using IGA to take your compliance to the next level
Today’s IGA tools have evolved from basic provisioning and synchronization tools to crucial aspects of compliance and resilience. By automating the entire identity life cycle, companies can strengthen security and reduce manual intervention. Compliance with regulations such as GDPR, NIS2 and DORA is assured via access reviews and audit trails, while AI-based automation lowers business managers’ decision fatigue.
Enterprises will achieve four important goals by incorporating IGA into daily business operations:
- Prevention of entitlement creep via automated revoking of outdated access rights
- A quicker onboarding process for employees, third parties and contractors
- Automated certification campaigns to guarantee ongoing compliance
- Audit readiness and improved visibility
By using IGA, companies can switch from reactive compliance to proactive security. In doing so, they are acknowledging identity governance for the strategic asset that it is. Instead of paying attention only to access control, today’s IGA solutions empower companies to manage compliance, risk mitigation and operational efficiency from a central platform. Implementing modern IGA positions enterprises for regulatory alignment, resilience and growth amidst the constantly changing compliance environment.
Next-level identity management
Financial services organizations have a lot on their plates these days. Not only must they keep their data secure, but they must also do so in a trackable, auditable way to stay compliant with an ever-increasing litany of regulations. With the proliferation of digital identities, relying on manual processes for identity management and compliance is no longer possible or wise. Modern IGA solutions offer the streamlined efficiency, security and auditability enterprises need to manage their digital identities and access rights.
Read More: Global Fintech Interview with Jeremy Ung, Chief Technology Officer at Blackline
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