Financial Services Penetration Testing

Testing for firms where a breach isn't just an IT problem, it's a regulatory one.

Manual penetration testing for fintech companies, payment platforms, and regulated financial services firms. Fixed pricing, UK-based consultants, and reports written to satisfy auditor and regulatory expectations.
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CREST Pathway member Cyber Essentials certified UK Cyber Security Council member

Why Financial Services Commission Testing

What brings financial services organisations to a penetration test

Penetration testing in financial services is rarely discretionary. It's usually driven by a regulatory obligation, an audit finding, or a procurement requirement from a larger partner. Here are the most common triggers.

01

FCA operational resilience requirements

The FCA expect regulated firms to test the resilience of their important business services, including the technology that underpins them. Penetration testing provides concrete evidence that your critical systems have been assessed against real-world attack techniques.

02

Audit or certification evidence

ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II don't require penetration testing outright, but both recommend it as a method of validating controls. Auditors typically want a report from an independent third party, not a self-assessment.

03

A partner or enterprise client requires it

Banks, insurers, and enterprise clients increasingly require security testing evidence as part of third-party due diligence or supplier onboarding. A pentest report from a credible provider can unblock a contract or procurement process.

04

PCI DSS compliance

Any organisation that stores, processes, or transmits cardholder data is subject to PCI DSS, which mandates penetration testing at least annually and after significant changes to the cardholder data environment.

What We Test

The attack surface for financial services applications

Financial services applications carry a distinct mix of risk: complex authentication, transaction and business logic that can be abused for financial gain, and APIs that connect to banking infrastructure and payment networks.

Authentication and session management

Testing of login flows, MFA implementation, session token handling, password reset mechanisms, and account lockout controls. Particular attention to OAuth and SSO integrations, which are common in fintech platforms and often under-tested. We ask: can an attacker impersonate a legitimate user or escalate privileges through an auth weakness?

Transaction and business logic

Testing for logic flaws specific to financial workflows: order manipulation, balance abuse, fee bypass, rounding errors, and replay attacks. These vulnerabilities rarely appear in automated scans because they require an understanding of how the application is intended to behave, not just how it technically responds.

API security

Testing of REST and open-banking APIs for broken authorisation (BOLA/BFLA), mass assignment, rate limiting gaps, data over-exposure, and injection vulnerabilities. We test with and without authentication, across multiple privilege levels, and against undocumented endpoints surfaced during reconnaissance. See our API penetration testing service for more.

Privilege escalation and data access

Can a customer-facing user access another customer's data? Can a read-only user modify records? Can an authenticated user reach administrative functions? Horizontal and vertical privilege escalation are high-severity risks for any platform holding financial data.

Third-party and partner integrations

Testing of connections to payment processors, open-banking providers, and data aggregators. Integration points introduce trust boundaries that are exploitable if not carefully validated. We review how your application handles inbound data from third parties and how outbound calls are authenticated.

Infrastructure exposure

Review of externally accessible infrastructure: admin panels, exposed staging environments, cloud storage endpoints, and overly permissive services. For organisations using AWS, Azure, or GCP, this can be scoped as an add-on to the application assessment. See our infrastructure penetration testing service.

What You Receive

Deliverables from every engagement

Every engagement produces the same core deliverables as standard. There are no add-on fees for the report, debrief, or retesting.
01

Executive report

A non-technical summary of findings, risk ratings, and remediation priorities, written for senior stakeholders, board members, and regulatory or audit audiences.
02

Technical report

A detailed findings report with reproduction steps, severity scoring (CVSS), evidence, and remediation guidance. Structured to satisfy ISO 27001, SOC 2, and PCI DSS evidence requirements.
03

Debrief session

A call to present findings, discuss remediation priorities, and answer questions from your technical and compliance teams. Included as standard.
04

Free retesting

For application and external security testing, once you've remediated findings, we retest the affected areas at no additional cost to confirm the fixes hold before you share the report externally.

Common Questions

Financial services penetration testing: frequently asked questions

Our penetration testing provides independent, technical evidence that your systems have been assessed against real-world attack techniques, which directly supports the operational resilience requirements set out by the FCA.

For most regulated firms, standard penetration testing from an independent provider is what is required, and that is what we deliver. If you have a specific regulatory context or audit requirement, include that in your quote request and we'll confirm what the engagement needs to cover.

Yes. Our penetration testing methodology covers the requirements set out in PCI DSS v4.0 for penetration testing of the cardholder data environment (CDE) and connected systems. The technical report is structured to support your QSA's evidence requirements.

If you have specific PCI DSS scope or segmentation testing requirements, let us know during scoping and we'll confirm what's included in the proposal.

Yes. Our reports are written with the expectation that they will be shared with third parties, including auditors, certification bodies, regulators, and enterprise clients. The executive report is written for non-technical audiences; the technical report satisfies most auditor evidence requirements.

We can also provide an attestation letter confirming the scope and conduct of the engagement on request.

We work within agreed rules of engagement that define how test data is handled, what environments are in scope, and what to do if we encounter real customer data. We prefer to test against a staging environment where possible.

All findings and evidence are handled securely and deleted in accordance with the engagement terms at the end of the project. We're happy to work within your firm's data handling requirements and to sign an NDA before testing begins.

Pricing is fixed-scope, based on the complexity and scale of the engagement, not a day rate. A typical fintech application assessment starts from around £2,700 for a web application, with API testing often included or priced as a combined scope.

See our penetration testing pricing page for more detail, or request a quote and we'll respond with a fixed-price proposal within one business day.

Ready to scope your financial services penetration test?

Tell us about your application and regulatory context and we'll respond with a fixed-price proposal within one business day. No obligation.

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