Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

PCI DSS compliance is a mandatory, revenue-critical requirement for fintech companies that touch cardholder data—directly or indirectly. This guide is written for fintech founders, CISOs, CTOs, and security leaders building or scaling payment-enabled platforms in the US and globally. If your fintech stores, processes, or transmits cardholder data, PCI DSS compliance for fintech companies is not optional—it is a baseline operating requirement. With PCI DSS v4.0.x now fully in force.

Now that CMMC is a mandatory part of participating in the defense supply chain, a lot of businesses are starting to grapple with the requirements and what they mean for operations. One of the biggest roadblocks is the use of an MSP, or Managed Services Provider. MSPs are the backbone of many businesses that don’t have the resources to spin up entire architectures on their own. It’s a huge benefit and allows companies to exist when otherwise the investment to get started would be way too high.

For many organizations, risk management is still stuck in the past—reliant on spreadsheets, manual reviews, and static registers that go stale shortly after they’re created. Without clear ownership or automation, treatment plans linger, and accountability slips. Risks remain fragmented across departments, disconnected from business impact and board visibility. ‍ At the same time, emerging threats are evolving faster than ever.

CISA recently published BOD 26-02, the latest Binding Operational Directive shaping how federal agencies manage cyber risk. While attention often gravitates toward highly visible directives like KEV, this one matters for a different reason: it raises the standard for how lifecycle risk must be tracked and sustained over time. BOD 26-02 is described as guidance on unsupported edge devices, which is accurate but incomplete.

A SOC 2 Penetration Testing (pentest) is often highly recommended by the auditors to demonstrate the effectiveness of the controls implemented during the SOC 2 audit. Developed by the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA), SOC 2 establishes a comprehensive framework based on 5 key pillars for managing data and strengthening relationships with all stakeholders.

Ask five compliance leads in the gaming industry how 6.4.3 applies to their payment flows, and you’ll get five different answers. Ever since PCI v4.0.1 has come into effect, gaming and iGaming operators have been struggling to identify where they fall in scope, which SAQ paths apply to their specific architecture, and if Requirement 6.4.3 and 11.6.1 apply to them or their payment processors.

Vendor risk programs often scale faster than the teams that run them. Every new third-party relationship adds security questionnaires, evidence requests, and hours of manual follow-up. When a single vendor review can take 50+ hours, backlogs grow, reviews slow, and critical risks slip through. ‍ At the same time, vendor security postures change constantly.

Most teams only realize they need a backup policy after something goes wrong and by then, it’s too late. A clear, practical backup policy doesn’t just tick a compliance box; it keeps your business running when systems fail, ransomware hits, or someone accidentally deletes production data. This guide walks you through a ready-to-use backup policy template so you can define what to back up, how often, where it lives, and who is accountable, without starting from a blank page.

What happens when there’s an unexpected interruption to your business? Certainly, it depends on the kind of interruption. The way your business handles something like a power outage can be quite different from how you handle a wildfire, which will be different from how you handle a cyberattack. The core principles are the same. You want to have ways to defend your business, to restore services, and to ensure continuity as much as possible.