[ CONSULTING ] // FINANCIAL SERVICES

Software consulting for banks, fintechs, and insurers who get audited for real.

SDVOSB-certified engineers who have shipped against FIS, Fiserv, Jack Henry, FedNow, and Nacha — and survived the SOC 2, PCI, and FFIEC exams that followed.

Veteran-Owned SDVOSB
[001 / 005] Field Conditions

Most consultancies underestimate what shipping in regulated finance actually costs.

// SITUATION

The demo works in a sandbox. Then the engagement hits the real constraints: a SOC 2 Type II window, a PCI assessor with opinions, a core banking adapter that times out under load, and a regulator asking for a 7-year audit trail nobody planned for. Generic consultancies treat compliance as a checkbox at the end. The result is rework, delayed launches, a six-figure remediation bill after the first audit, and an engineering team that no longer trusts the integrator. We have cleaned up enough of these to know the failure modes by name.

  • ▸ PII and cardholder data leaking into application logs, Sentry breadcrumbs, and analytics events that nobody scoped into the CDE.
  • ▸ Optimistic REST clients against FIS, Fiserv, or Jack Henry that retry non-idempotently and create duplicate ledger entries at month-end.
  • ▸ Audit logs stored in the same database as the records they audit, with no immutability, no hash chain, and no retention policy.
  • ▸ Regulatory reports built as Excel exports off the production replica, with no lineage and no way to reproduce a prior quarter's filing.
7-yr
Default audit log retention, immutable
< 8 wks
Typical first regulated domain shipped
100%
US-based senior engineers, no offshore
[002 / 005] Operational Approach

Build for the auditor first, the user second, the demo last.

  1. STEP-01

    Map controls before code

    Before sprint one, we map every data flow against SOC 2 CC-series, PCI-DSS 4.0 requirements, and applicable SR letters or NYDFS 500 controls. Encryption boundaries, key custody, log retention, and break-glass paths get decided on a whiteboard, not during a Jira refinement.

  2. STEP-02

    Audit-grade logging from day one

    Every state change emits a structured, append-only event with actor, source IP, request ID, and prior/next hash. We ship to an immutable store (S3 Object Lock or equivalent) with 7-year retention defaults. Auditors get read-only Athena access, not screenshots.

  3. STEP-03

    Isolate PII and PAN early

    Cardholder data and PII live behind a tokenization service from commit one — never in the primary app database. We use Stripe, Basis Theory, or a Vault-backed service so the audit scope shrinks and engineers stop accidentally logging SSNs into Datadog.

  4. STEP-04

    Integrate cores without breaking them

    FIS, Fiserv DNA, Jack Henry, Finastra, and the FedLine/SWIFT/Nacha rails do not forgive sloppy retries. We build idempotent adapters with reconciliation jobs, dead-letter queues, and end-of-day proof-of-balance checks before anything touches production traffic.

  5. STEP-05

    Prove reliability, then ship

    Game-day failure drills, chaos tests against the payment path, and documented RTO/RPO numbers go to the risk committee before launch. We do not declare done at feature-complete; done means a tested runbook and a signed-off DR exercise.

// TYPESCRIPT PATTERN 
// Idempotent ACH submission with audit envelope.
// Pattern we reuse for Nacha, FedNow, and card network adapters.

import { createHash } from "crypto";
import { auditLog } from "./audit";
import { vault } from "./vault";

export async function submitAchTransfer(req: TransferRequest, actor: Principal) {
  const idempotencyKey = createHash("sha256")
    .update(`${req.originatorId}:${req.traceNumber}:${req.effectiveDate}`)
    .digest("hex");

  const existing = await db.transfers.findByIdempotencyKey(idempotencyKey);
  if (existing) return existing; // Nacha forbids duplicate entries.

  const tokenizedAccount = await vault.tokenize(req.destinationAccount);

  const record = await db.transfers.insert({
    idempotencyKey,
    amountCents: req.amountCents,
    accountToken: tokenizedAccount, // raw PAN/DDA never hits this table
    status: "pending",
    submittedBy: actor.id,
  });

  await auditLog.append({
    event: "ach.submitted",
    actor: actor.id,
    sourceIp: actor.sourceIp,
    resourceId: record.id,
    payloadHash: createHash("sha256").update(JSON.stringify(req)).digest("hex"),
    prevHash: await auditLog.lastHash(),
  });

  return record;
}

Idempotency keys, tokenization, and hash-chained audit events are non-negotiable on any payment path — this is the minimum shape we accept in code review.

[003 / 005] Common Questions

Field FAQ.

→ Are you SOC 2 compliant, and can you work inside our SOC 2 boundary?

Yes. VooStack maintains its own SOC 2 Type II posture and is comfortable operating as a sub-processor inside a client's report. We sign BAAs and DPAs, work from hardened endpoints with MDM, use SSO with hardware keys, and keep client code in segregated repos with least-privilege access. We have walked into Vanta, Drata, and manual auditor interviews on behalf of clients and can produce evidence — access reviews, change tickets, training records — without a fire drill.

→ Do you handle PCI-DSS scope, and how do you keep it small?

Scope reduction is the entire game. We default to network tokenization through Stripe, Adyen, Basis Theory, or a HashiCorp Vault transit backend so cardholder data never lands in application databases or logs. We segment CDE workloads into separate VPCs and accounts, route only tokenized references through business logic, and document the data flow diagram and SAQ category up front. Most clients end up with SAQ A or A-EP instead of the full D.

→ What core banking and payment systems have you integrated with?

Across the team: FIS Profile and IBS, Fiserv DNA and Premier, Jack Henry SilverLake, Finastra Phoenix, Temenos T24, plus the rails — FedLine, FedNow, Nacha ACH, SWIFT MT/MX, Visa/Mastercard authorization, and Plaid/MX/Finicity for aggregation. Each has its own quirks: DNA's PowerOn, Jack Henry's jXchange, FIS's Code Connect. We write idempotent adapters with reconciliation, not optimistic REST clients that assume the mainframe will answer in 200ms.

→ How do you approach regulatory reporting builds (Call Report, FR Y-9C, MMIF, NAIC filings)?

Regulatory reports fail when source data is reshaped at report time. We build a regulatory data mart fed by immutable event streams, with lineage tracked from general ledger entry to filed line item. Every figure on a Call Report schedule traces back to a transaction ID and a control owner. We version the rule logic so when FFIEC or NAIC changes definitions mid-year, you can re-run a prior quarter and explain the delta to your examiner.

→ Are you SDVOSB-certified, and does that matter for a private-sector bank?

Yes, we are SBA-certified SDVOSB and veteran-owned. For commercial banks and insurers it usually does not change procurement directly, but it matters in two cases: regulated institutions with federal deposit insurance pursuing supplier diversity goals, and any work touching Treasury, FDIC, OCC, NCUA, or state-level government contracts. If you are a fintech selling into the federal government, our certification can also be assigned through teaming agreements.

→ How do you handle audit logging and evidence for examiners?

Every privileged action and every change to a financial record emits a structured event with actor, IP, request ID, payload hash, and a hash of the previous event — a lightweight tamper-evident chain. Logs land in S3 with Object Lock in compliance mode, default 7-year retention, and replicated cross-region. Examiners and internal audit get read-only query access via Athena or Snowflake views, with their own queries logged. No more zipping CSVs the night before an exam.

→ What reliability targets do you design for, and how do you prove them?

Payment-path services target four nines on authorization and three-and-a-half nines on settlement, with documented RTO under 60 minutes and RPO under 5 minutes for ledger data. We prove it with quarterly game days: kill the primary database, fail over the payment processor, simulate a region outage. The runbook, the timing, and the gaps go to the risk committee. A target you have not exercised is a wish, not an SLO.

→ Can you modernize a legacy system without a multi-year rewrite?

Usually, yes. Full rewrites of core systems fail more often than they succeed, and regulators do not love big-bang cutovers. We prefer the strangler pattern: stand up an anti-corruption layer in front of the legacy core, route new traffic through modern services, and migrate domains one at a time with dual-write and reconciliation. A typical engagement carves out the first domain in 8–14 weeks with measurable risk reduction along the way.

→ How do you staff engagements, and who actually writes the code?

Senior engineers, all US-based, all employees — no offshore subcontracting and no bait-and-switch from a principal to a junior after kickoff. Most of our team has prior financial-services or federal experience and can hold a clearance. Typical pod is two to four engineers plus a tech lead, embedded with your team in your tooling — your GitHub, your Jira, your Slack. We leave behind documentation and trained client engineers, not dependency.

[004 / 005] Adjacent Files

Continue recon.

REL-01

All services

Custom builds, AI integration, modernization, and senior staff augmentation.

 REL-02

Case studies

Regulated builds we have shipped, with the constraints and tradeoffs documented.

 REL-03

Engagement packages

Fixed-scope discoveries, modernization sprints, and embedded pod options.

 REL-04

Talk to an engineer

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