Insider tampering, eradicated. SOX evidence, automatic.

Where Banking & Insider Threats breaks today

Insider transaction tampering

Authorized staff with database privileges can adjust ledger entries, hide unauthorized transfers, or backdate approvals.

$17.4M — average insider-threat cost per organization · Ponemon, 2025

Audit log alteration

Conventional bank logs live in databases the same admins can write to. Forensic reconstruction relies on tape backups that may themselves have been touched.

SOX §404 — requires verifiable internal controls — manual processes routinely fail audit

Loan / approval conflict of interest

Self-approval and cross-team conflicts are routinely caught only by quarterly review, after the loss has crystallized.

$440M — Knight Capital loss from a single uncontrolled deployment · 2012

Three patents, deployed against this industry's threat model

Each of Axowl's three filed patents maps to a specific structural failure mode in Banking & Insider Threats. Together they form a single, end-to-end defense.

Hierarchical Distributed Trust Fabric — User token (L1) · Core banking (L2) · Regulator-attested (L3)

Each banker carries a PUF-rooted hardware identity (smartcard, security key). Core banking forms L2; the regulator-attested archive (or in-bank read-only mirror) is L3. Even a compromised root DBA cannot forge a transaction because the user's L1 PUF signature is required and the IRON sealed log is mirrored to L3.

Transition-Sealed Integrity System — Every wire, every override, sealed for SOX

Each wire transfer, loan approval, limit override, and reconciliation adjustment is sealed in real time with the actor's PUF identity. SOX §404 evidence becomes a query, not a quarterly manual project. PCAOB requests are answered in seconds with cryptographic certainty.

Pre-grant LLM Conflict Verification — Pre-grant blocking of self-dealing patterns

A grant of "loan officer + approve own loan" or "trader + write own audit log" is identified as a structural conflict and refused at the moment of grant. The Knight Capital class of "forgotten dev permission left in production" becomes structurally impossible.

Deployment that fits the threat model

Retail banks deploy at the Defense tier (Nitro Enclave + TPM workstations). Tier-1 investment banks and central banks adopt the Iron tier for full FPGA-backed sealing of every regulated action.

Recommended tier: T2 · Defense → T3 · Iron

Deployment path: AWS Nitro Enclave for retail · F2 for tier-1 · Sidecar for legacy core

Operational detail: Most banks deploy as a sidecar to the existing core banking system — no core replacement, no migration. The sidecar receives every action, applies the IRON seal, and exports SOX-ready evidence on demand. Day-1 deployment on AWS Nitro Enclaves.

Three concrete deployments

Wire transfer authorization

Every wire above threshold requires a sealed grant chain: originator's PUF, approver's PUF, AML screening — sealed at hardware speed inline with the action. Reverse-engineering a wire is impossible without holding the originator's hardware token.

Loan approval workflow

Self-approval is blocked at grant time. Conflicts of interest (loan officer related to applicant) are flagged by the LLM gate before the grant is issued.

Audit log integrity

The IRON sealed log is mirrored to a L3 region the local DBA cannot reach. Auditors verify integrity in seconds; tampered entries are mathematically detectable.

Versus what's deployed today

Today — Traditional HSM + SIEM

HSM signs whatever the application asks it to sign. SIEM aggregates logs that the source systems can edit before shipping.

With DPSM — Axowl DPSM

PUF-bound identity required at the action source — admins cannot extract it. Sealed logs at IRON grade are independent of source-system integrity.

Standards & regulatory frameworks aligned

• SOX §404
• SOC 2 Type II
• PCI DSS 4.0
• FFIEC IT Examination Handbook
• OCC Bulletin 2013-29 (third party)
• ISO 27001