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FinWise Data Breach Exposes Insider Threats, Highlights Need for Strong Encryption and Key Management

FinWise data breach exposes insider threats, highlighting the need for strong encryption and key management in financial institutions.

 

The 2024 FinWise data breach underscores the rising risk of insider threats within financial institutions. Unlike cyberattacks initiated by external hackers, this breach resulted from unauthorized access by a former employee who retained system credentials after leaving the company. On May 31, 2024, the ex-employee accessed FinWise Bank’s internal systems and leaked personal information of approximately 689,000 customers of American First Finance (AFF). The breach went unnoticed for more than a year, until FinWise discovered it on June 18, 2025. This prolonged exposure period raises serious concerns about the bank’s internal monitoring and incident detection capabilities. 

Legal complaints against FinWise allege that the compromised data was inadequately encrypted, intensifying public scrutiny and regulatory pressure. Security experts emphasize that effective information protection involves more than encrypting financial data; it requires continuous monitoring, abnormal access detection, and secure key management. FinWise’s alleged failure to deploy these essential safeguards has led to lawsuits and reputational damage. While the bank has yet to disclose details about its encryption protocols, experts agree that encryption alone cannot protect data without proper implementation and access controls. 

The incident highlights how encryption serves as a final layer of defense, but its effectiveness depends on complementary systems like key management and access control. Proper encryption management could have minimized the risk of data exposure, even after unauthorized access. In this context, Penta Security’s D.AMO encryption platform has gained renewed attention as an all-in-one defense solution against such vulnerabilities. 

D.AMO, South Korea’s first packaged encryption solution launched in 2004, integrates encryption, granular access control, and an independent key management system (KMS). Trusted by over 10,000 clients across the finance, public, and enterprise sectors, D.AMO ensures data confidentiality while maintaining operational efficiency. It supports multiple encryption methods and selective column-level encryption, reducing system slowdown without compromising data protection. 

The platform’s key management system, D.AMO KMS, operates as a dedicated hardware appliance that keeps encryption keys separate from the data they protect. By dividing the roles of database and security administrators, D.AMO prevents unauthorized individuals—including insiders—from accessing both encrypted data and the keys simultaneously. Even if an attacker breaches the database, the absence of decryption keys renders the stolen data unusable. 

Additionally, D.AMO Control Center provides centralized management across an organization’s encryption systems. It allows administrators to monitor logs, enforce role-based access controls, and manage permissions to reduce insider misuse. This centralized visibility helps institutions detect unusual behavior early and maintain compliance with international data security regulations such as PCI-DSS, GDPR, and CCPA. 

The FinWise breach serves as a cautionary tale about the consequences of weak encryption governance and insufficient access monitoring. It demonstrates that robust data protection requires a proactive, multi-layered approach integrating encryption, key management, and centralized oversight. Penta Security’s D.AMO platform embodies this strategy, offering institutions a unified solution to mitigate both external and insider threats. For organizations managing sensitive customer information, implementing comprehensive encryption frameworks is no longer optional—it is essential for preserving trust, compliance, and long-term security resilience.
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