What keeps Financial Services IT leaders awake
Operational resilience under DORA + FCA SYSC
FCA Operational Resilience and EU DORA require firms to evidence tested ICT recovery objectives, third-party risk controls and material outsourcing oversight — with personal accountability under SM&CR. Getting evidence wrong is enforceable.
Trading-floor downtime is measured in minutes
Every minute of order management system outage is missed P&L plus market-data fees still being charged. Recovery objectives have to be measured in minutes, not hours — and that demands engineered infrastructure, not best-effort.
Cyber attacks targeting fund administrators
BEC-driven wire fraud, ransomware on portfolio data, and third-party compromises (fund administrators, custodians) sit at the top of the FCA and PRA threat lists. Cyber Essentials Plus is now the minimum bar.
Audit trail across every system change
FCA audit cycles demand immutable change records, segregated dev/UAT/prod, MFA on privileged access, and quarterly attestation. Most firms still run change controls in spreadsheets.
Engineered for financial services reality
Cyber Essentials Plus + ISO 27001 readiness
Servnet runs the gap analysis, deploys the missing controls (EDR, MFA, vulnerability management, backup immutability), runs a mock external assessment, and supports your certifying body audit.
Immutable backup + ransomware recovery
Rubrik Security Cloud, Veeam Data Platform with hardened Linux repository or AWS S3-immutable. Tested annually with documented RTO/RPO so DORA compliance is evidenced not assumed.
Zero-trust network access for trading staff
Zscaler ZIA + ZPA replacing legacy VPNs — trading floors get sub-50ms latency to OMS, mobile staff get identity-aware access without exposing internal IPs. Conditional access via Entra ID.
High-frequency trading hardware
Low-latency NICs (NVIDIA ConnectX, Solarflare/Xilinx), in-rack KVM (Raritan KX IV) and FIPS 140-2 console access (Vertiv ACS8000) for co-location and corporate data hall builds.
The frameworks Servnet supports
FCA Operational Resilience (PS21/3)
Important Business Service mapping, impact tolerance setting, vulnerability identification, scenario testing.
DORA (EU 2022/2554)
ICT risk management, third-party concentration risk, threat-led penetration testing, incident reporting in 24h.
Cyber Essentials Plus
Required by major banks for vendor onboarding, by Lloyds Market for some lines of business.
ISO 27001:2022
Annex A control set adopted by most institutional and pension fund counterparties.
PCI-DSS 4.0
If you handle card data in custodial or brokerage capacity — March 2025 deadline for new controls.
FCA SYSC 8 & SM&CR
Material outsourcing oversight, personal accountability of senior managers for IT and resilience.
Customer profiles served
- ✓FCA-authorised investment managers (£50M–£10B AUM)
- ✓Asset managers, wealth managers and family offices
- ✓Brokerage firms, prime brokers and electronic trading desks
- ✓Fund administrators and TPAs
- ✓Private banks and challenger banks
- ✓Fintech / regtech start-ups requiring enterprise vendor partnerships
Financial Services IT FAQs
Is Servnet a Cyber Essentials Plus assessor?
Servnet is not an IASME-licensed assessor body — we provide the readiness work (controls, evidence, mock audits) and partner with NCSC-approved assessors to issue the certificate. Most firms achieve Cyber Essentials Plus 6–10 weeks from kick-off with our help.
Can you support a multi-cloud hybrid (AWS + Azure + on-prem)?
Yes — many of our financial services customers run Azure for productivity (Entra, M365), AWS for analytics / risk computation, and on-prem for trading floor + custodial data. Servnet designs and supports across all three with single accountability.
Do you provide an FCA-evidenced backup solution?
Yes — Rubrik Security Cloud or Veeam Data Platform with hardened immutable repository (typically S3-immutable or Linux hardened with single-use credentials). We provide the documented test results, RTO/RPO evidence and DORA Article 12 alignment your operational resilience report needs.
How quickly can you respond to a P1 trading floor incident?
For 24×7×4hr contracts a UK engineer is on-site within 4 hours with parts. For Tier 1 trading customers we offer 24×7×2hr SLAs with engineer pre-positioning. Phone escalation to a senior engineer is unconditional and within minutes.
Can you assist with DORA third-party register and ICT contract reviews?
Yes — we work alongside your legal and compliance teams to ensure ICT contracts contain the DORA Article 30 contractual clauses, that your third-party register reflects criticality classifications, and that you have the audit and exit rights DORA requires.
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