A Practical Cybersecurity Checklist for Egyptian Fintech Startups

Egypt's fintech and insurance tech sectors are growing fast — but so are cyber threats. In the past year, we've seen three Egyptian financial services companies hit by ransomware, two of which had no incident response plan.

Why Egypt Is a Target

Three factors make Egyptian fintechs attractive targets:

• Rapid digitization without matching security investment
• Regulatory frameworks that are still evolving
• High-value financial data with sometimes weak access controls

Our Security Checklist

Before we ship any product for a financial client, we run through this checklist:

1. Infrastructure Hardening

• All servers run on private subnets with no public SSH access
• Database connections require TLS 1.3 and IP whitelisting
• Secrets (API keys, DB passwords) are stored in a vault, never in code

2. Application Security

• OWASP Top 10 review on every release
• Input validation on all user-facing forms
• Rate limiting on authentication endpoints

3. Monitoring & Response

• 24/7 log monitoring with anomaly detection
• Automated backups with 4-hour recovery time
• Incident response playbook tested quarterly

The Reality Check

Most breaches we investigate start with something basic: an exposed admin panel, a weak password, or an unpatched server. You don't need a million-dollar security budget — you need discipline and a checklist.

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