Why secure business banking must be central to your cyber strategy
In recent years, businesses have made massive strides in cybersecurity. Security has become a core pillar of digital operations, but there’s one critical area where that strategy often breaks down: secure business banking.
While finance and security teams are tightening internal systems, the platforms they rely on for daily treasury operations, like banking portals, approval workflows, and fund transfers, remain outdated, manual, and dangerously exposed.
Secure business banking is rarely treated as part of the broader cybersecurity strategy. And that’s a problem. So why is security at the bank level still an afterthought?
Treasury is a prime target for cybercriminals
Traditionally, cybersecurity strategies have focused on protecting infrastructure, applications, and customer data. But when it comes to treasury operations, security practices often lag behind. And cybercriminals have taken notice.
Attackers are financially motivated, and treasury is one of the few functions where a successful breach results in a direct, immediate payout. That’s why tactics like Business Email Compromise (BEC), invoice fraud, and social engineering are so prevalent. All they require is a distracted employee, a weak validation process, or an unmonitored approval flow.
Small companies aren’t the only ones facing this problem. Mature fintechs often rely on email to approve financial transactions, lack proper access controls, or operate without anomaly detection in their treasury stack.
To make matters worse, AI-powered tools and deepfake technology are now being used to automate and scale these attacks. Scams that once required human interaction are becoming commoditized and faster to deploy. Meanwhile, legacy banking platforms remain slow, manual, and unprotected.
Treasury is a high-value target sitting on a low-security platform. And that makes it the ideal entry point for attackers.
Common weaknesses in the current banking stack
While treasury teams are under pressure to move faster and stay secure, the platforms they rely on haven’t kept up. Most corporate banking systems still run on outdated infrastructure. They lack even the most basic security capabilities that modern tech environments consider standard.
Here are some of the most common weaknesses we see in today’s business banking stacks:
- Lack of multi-factor authentication for critical transactions.
- Static access controls with excessive permissions, especially at executive level.
- No real-time logging or anomaly detection to spot unusual activity.
- Limited or no integration with internal security tools (e.g. SSO, IAM).
- Overreliance on email for transaction approvals and sensitive communication.
- No visibility into who accessed what, when, or from where.
When treasury systems sit outside the security strategy, they become a blind spot. And in today’s threat landscape, that’s a risk businesses can’t afford.
The disconnect between internal security and external risks
Despite businesses investing heavily in cybersecurity, there is a clear disconnect between internal security and external risks. Businesses assume that financial operations are protected. In reality, a critical part of the workflow is happening in a system it doesn’t control, can’t monitor, and wouldn’t know is compromised until it’s too late.
Here’s where the disconnect becomes most dangerous:
- Internal systems use SSO and role-based access; banks often don’t— Finance teams can log in to every internal system with secure, auditable credentials. Then approve a million-euro transfer via shared credentials on a banking portal.
- IT teams regularly clean up excessive internal permissions; in banking, not so much— While IT audits access to sensitive systems, banking platforms often allow blanket access to multiple users, including execs who shouldn’t have operational privileges.
- Real-time visibility and anomaly detection are standard, but absent in banking tools— Security teams monitor internal apps continuously, yet treasury systems lack real-time monitoring or alerting.
- Security and IT manage logs internally, but banking logs are inaccessible or delayed— When something suspicious happens inside your stack, it’s logged and traceable. Banking portals often silo logs, limit access to them, or fail to provide them altogether.
What needs to change for a truly secure business banking
For companies to treat cybersecurity as a business strategy, the platforms they rely on must be built with security at the core.
Business banking needs a new approach. One that:
- Builds security into the architecture— From encryption to permissions, security must be part of the core design, not a checkbox feature added after launch.
- Integrates with your existing security environment— Single sign-on, identity federation, and access controls should align with the rest of your tech stack, not force your team into exceptions and workarounds.
- Provides real-time visibility and anomaly detection— The platform should surface unusual patterns and high-risk activity, not rely on your team to spot issues manually after the fact.
- Reduces human error with smart workflows— Dual approvals, channel separation, and automated validations can prevent most social engineering attacks, if they’re built into the flow.
- Delivers full traceability of actions and access— A secure platform logs every login, approval, and data interaction, making them searchable and alertable in real time.
Business banking platforms should meet the same standards we already demand from internal systems: secure by default, configurable, and intelligent.
Security must start where the money moves
At Clovr Labs, we believe secure business banking should be the standard. While most banking platforms remain slow to adapt, we’re working to build a new model that puts cybersecurity at the core of financial operations.
If you’re rethinking the role your bank should play in your cybersecurity strategy, here are a few smart first steps:
- Evaluate your current banking platform’s security posture.
- Align user access with least-privilege principles.
- Implement dual-approval and out-of-band validation for payments.
- Reduce reliance on email for sensitive communications.
- Seek platforms that integrate with your identity and monitoring tools.
- Train finance teams on evolving threat tactics like BEC and deepfakes.
Every layer of protection helps. The goal is to reduce blind spots, increase visibility, and build resilience into the systems where financial risk lives.
Want to explore what practical steps your company can take now to reduce risk?
