Client Overview
A global systemically important financial bank (G-SIB) required assistance in scaling its digital asset custody platform, ensuring enterprise-grade cryptographic security, third-party integrations, and workflow governance.
Security Challenges Faced
Managing complexity across key management, transaction lifecycles, and policy enforcement
Ensuring that every architectural layer—from approval workflows to user authentication—was hardened and aligned with security principles from the ground up
Halborn’s Solutions – Secure by Design
Halborn performed source code reviews, pentests, and system-level architecture assessments
Advised on key lifecycle management, access control tiers, authorization rules, and separation of duties
Defined policies for secure third-party integrations (e.g., oracles, analytics tools) without compromising custody integrity
What Set Halborn Apart
Halborn applied a secure-by-design methodology—validating whether every system assumption held under adversarial conditions, including misuse and abuse cases rarely considered in traditional design.
Results Achieved
Identified multiple implementation risks and corrected them pre-deployment
Helped the G-SIB architect a zero-failure escalation path and role separation matrix critical for regulatory inspection
Going Above and Beyond
Working with a G-SIB comes with elevated expectations—and Halborn rose to meet them. From policy enforcement workflows to authorization logic and third-party integrations, Halborn evaluated every piece of the platform through the lens of systemic risk, compliance assurance, and operational scalability.
More than just testers or advisors, Halborn embedded with the platform team to proactively model threats, simulate adversarial behaviors, and validate the assumptions underpinning core financial operations. Our Secure by Design methodology ensured that the custody platform was not only hardened for known attacks, but also for edge cases, insider threats, and novel vectors specific to institutional ecosystems.
By helping the G-SIB think beyond the scope of a traditional audit and toward a long-term roadmap for operational resilience, Halborn became a trusted partner in securing the next generation of global digital finance infrastructure. Our guidance empowered the platform to scale securely—knowing that every layer, from cryptographic keys to user permissions, was protected by design.
