Three High-Impact Ways Financial Institutions Use Security Service Edge to Combat Their Biggest Security Risks

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Regional financial institutions (FIs) operate in one of the most demanding environments in financial services—where speed, security, and trust are non-negotiable. With lean teams, growing compliance pressure, and rising customer expectations, FIs continue to push forward. They are constantly adopting new technologies, expanding digital services, and defending against sophisticated threats, often with fewer resources

But behind every transaction, trade, loan approval, or insurance claim, security teams are waging a silent war. They battle a constant stream of alerts, hunt for anomalies, and race to patch vulnerabilities—all this while managing lean IT teams, aging infrastructure, and an expanding ecosystem of third-party APIs that widen their attack surface.

It’s no wonder then that their cybersecurity landscape is mired in complexity. In PwC’s Digital Trust Survey 2025, 42% of Asia Pacific FIs said the increasing complexity of cyberthreats will have the greatest impact in shaping their cybersecurity strategy over the next five years.

Add rising regulatory pressure to the mix, and the stakes are high: one breach could mean significant financial and reputational damage. Hong Kong, for instance, passed a cybersecurity law in March 2025 to regulate operators of critical infrastructure—including all banks and financial services—mandating them to report cybersecurity incidents or risk penalties of up to HK$5 million ($640,000).

With the expectation of defending against sophisticated threats, ensure compliance, and support digital transformation, Security Service Edge (SSE) offers a smarter way to protect data and users on existing workflows. With open integration across the existing security investments, SSE makes it possible to layer on real-time protection, adaptive access, and cloud-smart controls while continuing to use current applications and infrastructure.  

Here are three high-impact ways SSE is helping FIs fight fraud, shut down shadow IT, and protect sensitive data, while staying fast, compliant, and in control.

1: Protect and secure web and cloud access to sensitive data

The challenge:

FIs are increasingly adopting cloud-based tools to support collaboration, customer engagement, and operational efficiency. But they are also opening new doors for employees to use personal devices, unmanaged apps, and unsanctioned cloud services. According to Netskope Threat Labs 2025 report, 92% of financial services employees regularly use personal cloud apps in the workplace, and 13% upload sensitive data.

Clearly, this is inviting significant data risks. Basic web filters can’t distinguish between personal and corporate app instances or track how data is moving within those environments. This makes it difficult to prevent sensitive financial information from being accidentally or intentionally leaked.

With SSE:

SSE gives FIs deep, granular visibility into how users interact with cloud and web applications—down to the specific instance of each app. It enables real-time inspection of user activity, such as uploads, downloads, and shares, and applies context-aware policies that differentiate between corporate and personal app usage.

For example, a relationship manager can upload confidential customer documents to the bank’s sanctioned Microsoft 365 environment but will be automatically blocked from doing the same on a personal OneDrive account

The impact:

With SSE, regional FIs gain control over how data is accessed, used, and shared across the cloud, without having to block essential tools or constrain users. SSE reduces the risk of accidental data leakage, insider mishandling, and shadow IT exposure, helping institutions maintain compliance and customer trust while enabling safe, secure digital operations.

2: Detect and block fraud in real time

The challenge:

As more financial services go digital, and institutions integrate with third-party platforms to enable embedded finance, unusual or high-risk activity, such as compromised credentials, privilege misuse, and misconfigured access controls, can slip through unnoticed. Limited in-house security resources make early detection even harder. FIs that still rely on static rules or post-event reviews often miss fast-moving or subtle fraud attempts—putting customer trust and regulatory standing at risk.

With SSE:

SSE enables institutions to a pply real-time behavioural analytics and adaptive access controls to detect anomalies as they occur. For example, if a loan officer logs in from an unusual location or tries to access the bank’s credit evaluation system from a personal device, SSE can trigger multi-factor authentication, restrict access to view-only mode, or block the session entirely.

It can also detect patterns like impossible travel, such as logins from Singapore and New York within a few minutes of each other, sudden privilege escalations, or unusual transaction behaviour, then respond instantly by isolating the session, alerting the Security Operations Centre (SOC), or forcing step-up verification before the action is completed.

The impact:

With SSE, institutions can detect and disrupt fraud attempts in real time, before they escalate into financial loss or regulatory violations. Security teams can act on behavioural signals across users, devices, and sessions. This reduces exposure to account compromise and insider threats but also restores confidence in digital channels by proving to customers—and regulators—that the institution can respond with speed, precision, and control.

3: Upgrade security architecture at scale—without infrastructure overhaul

The challenge:

Smaller financial institutions face the same advanced threats as global banks but without the flexibility or resources to revamp their security framework. Their security stacks are often fragmented, with multiple point solutions layered over time, and legacy systems that can’t scale or adapt quickly.

For example, identifying a suspicious login may require correlating logs from separate tools, resulting in delayed detection and limited ability to respond in real time. This makes visibility inconsistent, integration difficult, and day-to-day management a strain on IT teams. But upgrading the entire security architecture is expensive, complex, and time-consuming.

With SSE:

SSE enables smaller financial institutions to enhance their security posture without the need for a full overhaul. It integrates with existing identity, endpoint, and threat detection tools, bridging visibility gaps and streamlining fragmented environments.

By unifying access control, data protection, and threat prevention across cloud, web, and private applications, SSE simplifies security operations and reduces the reliance on multiple point solutions. As institutions expand, whether by users, applications, or geography, SSE scales with them, without introducing additional complexity or administrative burden.

The impact:

FIs can quickly close critical security gaps, meet compliance demands, and respond to evolving threats, without needing a complete architectural refresh. SSE makes it possible to modernise with minimal disruption, consolidate fragmented security tools, and empower lean IT teams to manage more with less. This leads to stronger, more scalable protection, delivered at the speed and agility that growing institutions need.

But how can you make these use cases work for you? Telstra International and Netskope have partnered to deliver a cloud-native SSE solution designed specifically for the complex demands of modern regional FIs—like yours.

Built on the Netskope One platform and backed by Telstra’s digital global infrastructure and connectivity capability, this unified offering delivers a data-first, Zero Trust approach to securing SaaS, web, and private applications—without compromising performance or user experience.