About
Operators who understand
financial infrastructure.
Hoplite Labs is a boutique security consultancy serving the financial sector exclusively. Banks, exchanges, fintechs, and asset managers. We understand your regulatory constraints, your threat landscape, and the operational reality of protecting capital markets infrastructure.
Principles
How we work
01
Financial sector focus
We don't do general security consulting. Every operator on our team has worked in or with financial institutions. We understand PCI-DSS scoping, SWIFT CSP, SOC2 Type II, and the regulatory landscape you operate in.
02
Threat-model driven
FIN groups, nation-state actors, insider threats, and organized crime all target financial institutions differently. We scope testing to your actual threat landscape - the adversaries who'd actually target your organization.
03
Compliance and security
Our reports satisfy auditors AND find real issues. Every finding includes reproduction steps, root cause analysis, and remediation guidance that maps to relevant compliance frameworks.
04
Direct communication
No account managers, no layers. You work directly with the people doing the testing. Critical findings affecting trading systems or customer data get communicated immediately.
05
Selective engagements
We take fewer projects to deliver better results on each one. When we commit to an engagement, your trading platform, custody system, or payment infrastructure gets our full attention.
06
Ongoing relationship
Security for financial services isn't a one-time event. We build long-term relationships with clients through annual pentests, quarterly retesting, and continuous monitoring support.
Anti-patterns
What we don't do
We're explicit about the things we won't deliver. If you need these, we're not the right fit.
Checkbox compliance
If you need a pentest report to satisfy an auditor and don't care about the findings, find someone else. We test to find real issues.
Automated-only testing
We use tools, but we're not selling tool output. If you want a Nessus scan with a cover page, that's not what we do.
Rushed timelines
Thorough testing takes time. We won't compress a two-week engagement into three days because of a deadline. The work suffers.
Vague findings
"Improve security awareness" isn't a finding. Every issue we report is specific, reproducible, and actionable.
Background
Where we come from
Hoplite Labs was founded by security professionals who spent years securing financial institutions - investment banks, cryptocurrency exchanges, payment processors, and trading platforms.
We've seen security teams at major consultancies run automated scans and call it a pentest. We've watched compliance exercises produce paperwork that satisfies auditors but doesn't stop attackers. We built something different.
Our team has responded to SWIFT network intrusions, investigated exchange breaches, and built security programs for some of the largest fintechs in the world. We understand the difference between a vulnerability that affects your quarterly audit and one that affects your trading floor.
We don't publish client lists. In financial services, discretion isn't optional.
Work with us
Let's discuss your security posture.
We're selective about the work we take on. If your financial institution needs security testing that satisfies regulators and actually protects capital, get in touch.