What is SWIFT Compliance?

The Society of Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) is a cooperative founded in 1973 by members of the financial community. The goal of SWIFT is to help standardize the transmission of sensitive information and international financial transactions between financial and corporate entities through its proprietary network. Given the rising menace of financial crimes, the cooperative laid down a standard called SWIFT Customer Security Controls Framework (CSCF), designed to safeguard IT environments, control access to systems and detect and respond to anomalous activity. Any financial services institution using SWIFT’s network for financial transactions must demonstrate CSCF compliance. The framework is split into three main objectives, seven core principles and thirty-two security controls.

Overview of the SWIFT Customer Security Controls Framework

The SWIFT CSCF framework enables organizations around the world to securely transmit sensitive information pertaining to financial transactions in a rapidly evolving threat landscape. It contains mandatory and advisory security controls based on the following primary objectives:

Objectives	Principles
Secure your environment	1. Restrict internet access and segregate critical systems from general IT environment. 2. Reduce the attack surface and vulnerabilities. 3. Physically secure the environment.
Know and limit access	4. Prevent credential compromise. 5. Manage identities and segregate privileges.
Detect and respond	6. Detect anomalous activities to system or transaction records. 7. Plan for incident response and information sharing.

SWIFT’s standardized messaging format ensures that institutions can reliably communicate across different banking systems and countries. Additionally, it plays a critical role in maintaining global financial stability by enabling real-time monitoring and tracking of transactions, which is essential for regulatory compliance and fraud prevention. Financial institutions also leverage SWIFT for automating and streamlining processes such as securities trading, treasury management and reporting, making it an indispensable tool for global finance.

Benefits of SWIFT compliance

By adhering to SWIFT’s standards, financial institutions can protect themselves from cyberattacks that could lead to financial losses, reputational damage and regulatory penalties. Compliance also enhances trust with partners and customers by demonstrating a commitment to security and operational excellence. Furthermore, complying with SWIFT standards helps organizations avoid the costs associated with non-compliance, such as fines or the loss of SWIFT network access.

Security best practices for SWIFT compliance

With 65% of global financial organizations reporting a ransomware attack in 2024, stringent security controls have become indispensable to them^[1]. The SWIFT customer security controls framework requires participating organizations to build a threat-resistant security layer by:

Securing privileged access by centrally vaulting and rotating credentials and isolating sessions.
Implementing least privilege architecture to ensure every user has access only to the resources they need, thereby preventing unauthorized access.
Leveraging multi-factor authentication (MFA) by sending users through a second layer of verification before granting access to the system so organizations can effectively verify if the user signing is who they claim to be.
Protecting credentials by administering privileged access management (PAM) and avoiding poor password practices that users often resort to for convenience.
Monitoring and auditing privileged activities to expedite incident response and prevent users from exfiltrating sensitive data.

Role of identity security in meeting SWIFT compliance

With an expected 50% growth in identities in the next twelve months, complying with the SWIFT CSCF framework demands a holistic identity security strategy for financial organizations to prevent modern cyber threats^[2]. The primary reason for this is that privileged access is no longer limited to IT admins and anyone with the right levels of access can become a privileged identity.

As financial organizations are susceptible to identity-based threats, here’s how identity security can help cater to the SWIFT objectives using foundational identity and access management (IAM) solutions.

Objectives	Principles	Controls	Identity Security Requirements
Secure your environment	Restrict internet access and protect critical systems from general IT environment.	SWIFT Environment Protection Operating System Privileged Account Control	Centralized vaulting & rotation of credentials to prevent credential theft, including passwords, SSH keys and application secrets. Privileged session isolation to prevent the spread of malware.
Secure your environment	Reduce attack surface and vulnerabilities.	Operator Session Confidentiality and Integrity Vulnerability Scanning	Automatic discovery and onboarding of privileged accounts and credentials. Centralized access monitoring for all employees and third parties to corporate resources. Detect risky commands and automate response.
Know and limit access	Prevent compromise of credentials.	Password Policy Multi-Factor Authentication	Discover, vault and rotate credentials from the endpoint to hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructure. Centralized vaulting and policy control for credentials. Adaptive multi-factor authentication (MFA) to validate all user access. Integrated lifecycle management, access certification & authentication.
Know and limit access	Manage identities and segregate privileges.	Logical access controls Physical and Logical Password Storage	Implement least privilege access to cut down on escalation and prevent unauthorized access. Centralized vaulting & rotation of credentials to prevent credential theft. Just-in-time (JIT) access with Zero Standing Privileges (ZSP) to reduce the number of accounts and credentials with always-on privileged access. Detect credential theft or misuse and automate incident response.
Detect and respond	Detect anomalous activity to systems or transaction records.	Malware protection Logging and monitoring Intrusion detection	Session isolation and protection to prevent malware spread. Centrally monitor user behavior for forensics, audit and compliance. Detect and respond to risky and anomalous behavior.
Detect and respond	Plan for incident response and information sharing.	Cyber Incident Response Planning Security training and awareness Penetration testing Scenario risk assessment	Prescriptive guidance and advisory on KPI definitions to facilitate quick wins. Comprehensive training resources from the security vendor. ‘First-call’ partnerships with incident response (IR) firms aid in averting security disasters.

Learn more:

^[1] Statista, “Share of financial organizations worldwide hit by ransomware attacks from 2021 to 2024,” July 2024.
^[2] CyberArk, “Identity Security Threat Landscape Report 2024,” May 2024.