Industries / Finance
Microsoft 365 for financial services.
Built around the audit, not around the resale.
Regional banks, credit unions, RIAs, and M&A in financial services. We engineer the M365 controls that map to SOC 2, PCI DSS, GLBA, and FFIEC — and document them in writing for the examiner. Labor-only, vendor-neutral, no SKU-pushing.
FTC's amended GLBA Safeguards Rule has been in effect since June 2023. MFA enforcement on all customer-information access, encryption-at-rest, written incident response, and qualified-individual oversight are non-discretionary. Examiners expect evidence, not policies on a shelf.
Why labor-only matters in financial services
Fiduciary buyers and reseller incentives don't sit well together.
Banking, credit-union, and RIA buyers operate under fiduciary obligations, examiner scrutiny, and board-level audit oversight. Hiring an engineering firm whose margin lives on the licenses it recommends introduces a conflict that's increasingly hard to defend in a third-line-of-defense review. The labor-only model is the alignment.
Most regional banks and RIAs are aggressively pitched by Big-4 advisory firms on the high end and reseller-led MSPs on the low end. Both have valid use cases. Both also have license-resale or audit-conflict incentives baked into the engagement model. Labor-only consulting sits in between: senior engineering for the project, no resale margin on Microsoft licensing, no SOC 2 audit conflict because we're not the auditor.
We don't carry a partner badge. We don't resell licenses. We don't subcontract offshore. The work happens inside your tenant, under your controls, with engineering accounts you provision and revoke. Most engagements complete with zero customer NPI ever touching an engineering account — the work is at the configuration and metadata layer, not the data underneath.
Three project shapes
Where we typically engage in financial services.
Most engagements draw from one or two of these. The hardening and Defender for Cloud Apps work is recurring; the M&A tenant work is event-driven.
Project shape 01
Conditional Access and MFA hardening
FFIEC and the GLBA Safeguards Rule both expect risk-based authentication and demonstrated control. The Microsoft Conditional Access engine is the right primitive — but most regional banks and RIAs run a default-permissive baseline that wouldn't pass a real audit. The work is the policy model: who authenticates from where, with what device posture, into which workload, with what step-up.
- ›Phishing-resistant MFA (FIDO2 / hardware tokens) for privileged and customer-data access roles
- ›Device-compliance gating via Intune — managed devices for high-risk workloads
- ›Risk-based sign-in policies (Identity Protection) with break-glass procedures
- ›Country / impossible-travel blocks tuned for actual branch and remote-staff geography
- ›Session-control policies for sensitive SaaS access (Defender for Cloud Apps reverse proxy)
- ›Quarterly access reviews aligned to FFIEC Authentication Guidance
Project shape 02
Defender for Cloud Apps and SaaS governance
Banks, credit unions, and RIAs run a sprawling SaaS surface — loan origination, CRM, document management, e-signature, vendor portals. The shadow IT problem is acute and the data-loss surface bigger than most security teams realize. Defender for Cloud Apps is the M365-native control plane; the work is configuration, not licensing.
- ›Cloud Discovery from firewall and proxy logs — actual SaaS inventory
- ›App connectors to Salesforce, ServiceNow, Box, Google Workspace, AWS
- ›Session policies for unmanaged-device access to sanctioned apps
- ›DLP policies for customer NPI (non-public personal information) in SaaS
- ›Anomaly detection tuning for financial-sector signal patterns
- ›OAuth-app governance — third-party consents auto-blocked above risk threshold
Project shape 03
M&A tenant integration and RIA spinoffs
Bank holding companies acquiring de novo institutions, credit unions absorbing distressed peers, and RIAs splitting from broker-dealers all share the same technical pattern: a tenant-to-tenant migration under tight regulatory and operational scrutiny. The standard playbook applies; the financial-sector layer is what gets added on top.
- ›Tenant-to-tenant migration of mailboxes, OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams
- ›Identity rebuild on the receiving tenant with proper role-segregation
- ›Document-retention carve-outs for regulator-discoverable books and records
- ›Custodian and core-banking SSO / SAML re-integration on the destination tenant
- ›Coexistence handling for 6–12-week phased migration windows
- ›Audit-trail evidence for the regulators reviewing the merger / change of control
Compliance frameworks we engineer to
The control set, not the audit opinion.
We don't issue attestations, write policies, or provide legal advice on regulatory exposure. We engineer the technical controls that map to the framework and deliver documented evidence. The audit opinion belongs to your audit firm; the policy belongs to your compliance officer; the controls belong to us.
SOC 2 (Trust Services Criteria)
Security, Availability, Processing Integrity, Confidentiality, Privacy. The CC-series criteria (CC1–CC9) are the operational core. We map M365 control configurations to specific CC criteria and deliver written evidence packets that audit firms attach to the attestation.
PCI DSS v4.0
Where a bank, credit union, or fintech-adjacent customer touches cardholder data, PCI DSS v4.0 applies. The M365 work is the connected-systems boundary — making sure non-CDE systems don't accidentally ingest PAN, and that the CDE-adjacent identity model is properly segmented.
GLBA Safeguards Rule
FTC's amended Safeguards Rule (effective 2023) raised the bar significantly: written information security program, qualified individual oversight, MFA for customer-information access, and incident response plans. The technical floor is Conditional Access + MFA + audit logging + DLP for NPI.
FFIEC IT Examination Handbook
Regulator-facing baseline for federally insured institutions. Authentication Guidance (2021), Architecture / Infrastructure / Operations booklet, and Information Security booklet all cite specific control patterns. We engineer to FFIEC's expected control set and deliver examination-ready documentation.
NYDFS 23 NYCRR 500
If you operate in New York or insure customers there, the New York DFS cybersecurity regulation imposes specific requirements (CISO role, MFA, encryption, IR plan, third-party risk). The technical baseline overlaps heavily with FFIEC; the documentation requirements are stricter.
State data-protection statutes
California (CCPA/CPRA), Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Utah, and a growing list of states impose data-protection requirements that overlap with GLBA but add consumer-rights mechanics. Documentation discipline is what changes per state — the technical controls don't.
What we don't do
Boundaries are explicit. They're a feature, not a limitation.
Financial-services engagements are tightly scoped because the regulator looks closely at scope. The exclusions below aren't reluctant — they're the defining shape of the model.
No investment advice. No registered-rep activity.
We engineer M365. We do not select trading platforms, advise on portfolio software, or evaluate investment-research tools. That's a separate profession with separate licensure.
No SOC 2 attestation. No audit opinion.
We configure the controls and document the implementation. Your independent CPA firm issues the SOC 2 attestation. Mixing those roles introduces a conflict your examiner will flag.
No license resale. No SKU bias.
Licensing flows through your existing Microsoft contracting (CSP, EA, MCA-E, or Microsoft Direct). We bill engineering hours and fixed-fee scopes. The recommendation reflects what fits your environment, not what pays us margin.
No operational handoff into core banking, ACH, or wire systems.
M365 sits adjacent to those systems — we engineer the SSO, identity, and DLP boundary. The core, the ACH origination platform, and the wire room are operated by your team or your specialty providers. We integrate; we don't operate.
Recent financial-services references
Anonymized engagement profiles.
No client names. Sector + size + scope. The full engagement notes are on /work/.
Regional bank, 18 branches, ~700 employees
Conditional Access overhaul + Defender for Cloud Apps deployment ahead of a SOC 2 Type II window. Phishing-resistant MFA for treasury services and wire-room roles.
Credit union, ~250 staff, single-state
GLBA Safeguards Rule readiness — MFA enforcement, NPI DLP, audit logging baseline. Documentation handed to internal compliance officer for examiner review.
Independent RIA spinoff from a broker-dealer
Tenant-to-tenant migration. New tenant build with custodian SSO, books-and-records retention, advisor identity rebuild, and clean-cutover continuity for client portals.
Multi-state bank acquisition (acquirer side)
M&A tenant integration. 12-week phased migration with core-banking and ACH-origination coexistence. Examiner-ready audit trail at every stage.
Where to go next
Read the related work.
Service pillar
Identity, Security & Compliance
AD audit, Entra ID hybrid, Conditional Access, Defender for Cloud Apps. The full identity and compliance pillar.
Read more
Service
Tenant-to-Tenant Migration
M&A tenant integration and RIA spinoffs. Phased migration playbook for regulated environments.
Read more
About
Why no partner badges
The labor-only / vendor-neutral model — and why it matters most in regulated buying.
Read more
FAQ
Common questions from financial-services buyers.
Are you a SOC 2 firm? Do you do the audit?
No. SOC 2 attestations are issued by independent CPA firms — that's a different profession. Pro IT NW is the engineering side: we configure the Microsoft 365 controls (Conditional Access, MFA, audit logging, encryption, vulnerability management, access reviews) that map to the SOC 2 Trust Services Criteria. We deliver written control-implementation documentation that your audit firm attaches as evidence. Many regional banks and RIAs hire us specifically to ready the technical environment before a SOC 2 Type II window opens.
Do you give investment advice or touch trading systems?
No. We are not a registered investment adviser, broker-dealer, or financial-services consultancy in the regulatory sense. We engineer Microsoft 365, identity, and security configurations. We do not select trading platforms, advise on portfolio software, or operate any system inside the customer's environment after handoff. Engagements are scoped in writing and excluded scope is explicit.
How does this work for a 12-branch credit union with no internal Microsoft engineer?
Most regional banks and credit unions in our customer base do not staff a senior Microsoft engineer internally — that role is too expensive to keep on the bench between projects. We come in for the project (MFA hardening, Conditional Access baseline, Defender for Cloud Apps deployment, M&A tenant work) and hand documented operational keys back to the existing IT team or MSP. The engagement model is project consulting, not staff augmentation.
Can you handle an RIA spinoff from a broker-dealer?
Yes — this is one of the cleaner scopes in financial services. The technical pattern is a tenant-to-tenant migration with custodian-API handoffs, document retention carve-outs, and identity rebuild for the spinning-off advisors. The compliance overlay (FINRA-adjacent record retention, custodian compatibility, books-and-records continuity) shapes the migration plan. We do not advise on the broker-dealer agreement or the regulatory filings — that work belongs to the firm's compliance counsel.
What's the right approach for an M&A tenant merge in banking?
Slow. A 14-day acquirer-driven cutover that's typical in other industries is dangerous here — branch operations, ACH origination, BSA/AML reporting tooling, and core-banking integrations all have data-flow dependencies that surface after migration. We default to a phased approach: acquirer tenant first, then a controlled wave migration of the acquired side over 6–12 weeks, with custodian / core / vendor coexistence at every stage. The technical work is the same as any tenant-to-tenant; the operational risk envelope is tighter.
Have an examiner-facing project on the runway?
Tell us the institution type, the seat count, and the project (SOC 2 readiness, MFA hardening, M&A tenant work, RIA spinoff). Two-business-day response with scope and timeline.