In the last decade, the architecture of Wall Street has quietly turned inside out. The marble lobbies and physical trading floors remain, but the real infrastructure where billions of dollars move, where M&A deals are structured and where client personally identifiable information (PII) lives has migrated to the web browser.
For the modern financial institution, the browser is no longer just a portal to the internet; it is the operating system of the enterprise. It is where the Bloomberg Terminal meets the cloud, where Salesforce holds the client relationships, and where the Deal Room lives. But this shift has birthed a terrifying paradox for the financial CISO.
Financial CISOs are tasked with complying with some of the strictest regulations on the planet, including Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) 17a-4, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), the Payment Card Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Meanwhile, the perimeter has dissolved into a chaotic web of SaaS apps and unmanaged devices that essentially have financial CISOs trying to lock down a vault that has a million doors.
The stakes could not be higher for a breach that can shut systems down. In high-risk enterprises like finance, the cost of an outage is estimated at $5 million per hour. To enable business continuity in spite of rising threats, the financial sector needs a security architecture that moves as fast as the market.
By deploying PrismaⓇ Browser, financial institutions can bridge the gap between strict compliance and agility - replacing slow, complex VDIs with the seamless experience users demand.
You Can’t Secure What You Can’t See
Imagine a typical Tuesday, when a junior analyst, under pressure to deliver a market report, copies a block of sensitive client data and pastes it into a public GenAI tool to summarize. The data has just left your control forever. We are up against a harsh reality where 65% of organizations admit that their employees are using unsanctioned AI apps, meaning they have no idea what data is being shared in GenAI tools.
Traditional network security tools see the encrypted traffic moving to the AI provider, but they cannot see what is inside that packet. Traditional network security tools cannot see the copy-paste action. It doesn’t know if sensitive data was simply typed into the prompt. It cannot see the screenshot taken during a Zoom call. In the eyes of an auditor, this is a black hole.
And the threat isn't just internal negligence. Adversaries have realized that the browser is the path of least resistance. 95% of security incidents now originate in the browser, targeting the "last mile" where data is decrypted and vulnerable.
The Contractor Conundrum
This gets even more complicated when we look at who is doing the work. In financial services, agility is everything. Banks rely heavily on external expertise from auditors, legal counsel and IT specialists. In fact, 30% of the tech staff in financial services are external contractors.
This creates a massive logistical and security bottleneck. To secure these workers, organizations traditionally rely on two flawed methods:
- Shipping Laptops: This is operationally cumbersome, costly, and slows down onboarding and offboarding significantly.
- Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI): While compliant, VDI often provides a poor user experience with high latency, particularly for offshore users. Crucially, VDI generally does not protect against malware on the endpoint itself, such as keyloggers and screen scrapers.
Financial institutions are left with a binary choice: Block access and lose speed, or grant access and lose control.
The Hidden Risk of Non-SSO Apps and Shadow IT
The visibility gap hits organizations from two directions. First, there is the sprawl of shadow IT, where employees bypass IT to use PDF converters, unmanaged GenAI or niche project tools just to get the job done. Second, and often more critical, is the challenge of legitimate external collaboration.
Consider a major M&A Deal Room hosted by a partner bank. This isn't a rogue app; it is a sanctioned, high-stakes workspace. Yet, because it is managed by a third-party, your IT team cannot enable corporate SSO or enforce device health checks.
The security gap is identical in both the rogue SaaS tool and mission-critical partner environment scenarios. You lose control over how access happens, as no controls prevent a user from accessing these sensitive environments. A user can access, edit and download confidential files to an unmanaged, potentially infected machine, bypassing your DLP and security controls entirely.
Security That Moves at the Speed of the Financial Market
The solution isn't to build higher walls around the network or force users into clunky virtual desktops; it is to secure the workspace where the work actually happens.
Prisma Browser is an enterprise-grade browser that isolates enterprise apps from malware on untrusted endpoints. It sits on any unmanaged or managed device and extends Zero Trust policies across all actions in all apps.
1. Granular "Last Mile" Data Control
Prisma Browser secures the critical "last mile" of data usage by wrapping a protective layer around web applications, helping ensure that sensitive information remains safe even on unmanaged devices. It empowers organizations to enforce strict behavioral controls, such as blocking the copying and pasting of data into non-business apps and preventing the printing of corporate documents. To further mitigate risk, the browser can block screenshots, hide sensitive screens during conference calls, and apply identifiable watermarks to deter visual data theft, effectively sealing the gaps that traditional endpoint security cannot reach.
2. Eliminating Blind Spots
Prisma Browser provides visibility into the unknowns. It allows you to discover all applications and accounts used in the organization, even those outside SSO coverage. It detects risky passwords and extensions, shared accounts, and eliminates shadow IT, bringing these apps under the umbrella of enterprise security. IT teams get visibility into any application or account accessed via Prisma Browser or on a browser with Prisma Browser Extension. This lightweight extension installs directly onto third-party browsers and acts as an intelligent bridge.
3. Protection Against Advanced Threats
Financial data is a prime target for sophisticated attacks. Prisma Browser defends against this by blocking endpoint threats like keyloggers and screen scrapers, while also preventing replay attacks from stolen auth tokens. Prisma Browser also uses AI to stop spear phishing and block malicious websites in real-time, even if the page is brand-new and currently unclassified.
4. Zero Friction Onboarding
Forget shipping laptops. With Prisma Browser, you can enable secure zero-trust access to business apps from any device in minutes, allowing for rapid onboarding of partners and contractors without disruption.
5. Extended Enforcement for Critical Workflows
Using the Prisma Browser Extension, organizations can funnel access to sensitive applications like virtual deal rooms directly into Prisma Browser. This ensures that all established guardrails are strictly enforced the moment a user accesses critical data, without relying on manual user compliance. It seamlessly maintains productivity while guaranteeing that high-stakes interactions always occur within a protected environment.
Agility Without Compromise
The days of relying on legacy security tools to protect cloud-based workflows are over. By adopting a browser-first security strategy, financial institutions can finally resolve the tension between compliance and speed. You can empower your workforce to use the best tools, even GenAI and work from anywhere, knowing that the "last mile" is no longer a blind spot but your strongest line of defense.
Would you like to see how much your organization could save by switching to a browser-first security model? Reach out to our team for a customized demo.