Why Digital Risk Protection in Fintech is No Longer Optional

As fintech companies scale in size and sophistication, they increasingly rely on Integrated Risk Management (IRM) to build a strong foundation. It helps businesses respond to cyber threats, comply with regulations, track third-party dependencies, and maintain business continuity. From payment apps to digital lending platforms, IRM is the engine behind resilient fintech operations. However, there is a growing challenge. IRM tools are largely limited to internal systems. The most devastating risks often originate from the external world, beyond the firewall. That’s where Digital Risk Protection (DRP) enters the picture.

What Is Digital Risk Protection? 

Digital Risk Protection (DRP) refers to the threat monitoring and mitigation of threats from the outside digital environment. These threats may be found across the dark web, social media, and app stores. DRP targets risks that directly affect the organisation’s brand, data, leaders, or customers. 

Unlike traditional security tools that work within the enterprise, DRP operates externally. Key DRP capabilities are: 

1. Detecting phishing sites, fake domains, and lookalike brands 
2. Identifying impersonated executive accounts on social media 
3. Discovering counterfeit apps in unofficial app marketplaces 
4. Monitoring data leaks, such as exposed PII and credentials 
5. Facilitating takedown requests and remediation efforts

For digital-first fintechs, these features are no longer optional; they are essential for building and maintaining digital trust.

What Traditional IRM Covers 

IRM does a great job in managing internal compliance, audit trail and ensuring enterprise-level governance. However, it does not provide enough visibility to effectively handle external threats. Consider this: A fintech lender noticed a sudden drop-in user activity. Internally, everything looked fine, no system anomalies, no data breaches. But after an investigation, the team found a fake version of its app on an unauthorized app store. Users were unknowingly sharing sensitive data with bad actors. The IRM system showed no signs, yet the damage was real and public. In another case, investors of a popular payment application were impersonated via LinkedIn messages sent by a spoof account replicating the company’s CEO. Once again, there was no technical breach, but the deficit in trust generated proved sufficient to derail funding negotiations. 

These threats don’t trip alarms in your IRM dashboard. Yet, they are very real, very public, and increasingly common. And that’s where DRP fills a critical gap. 

DRP: A Strategic Extension to IRM 

Integrating Digital Risk Protection in fintech IRM framework isn’t just an IT decision; it’s a business strategy. It assists fintechs to remain one step ahead of threats in the dark and underpins critical pillars of risk governance. 

1. Brand Protection: Fintechs thrive on trust. DRP tools that detect domain spoofing, brand impersonation and fake social accounts help to protect customer trust. In sectors like peer-to-peer lending or digital wallets, where brand misuse can quickly go viral, this early detection is vital. 
2. Regulatory Readiness: Regulators are no longer satisfied with internal controls alone. They now demand visibility across the digital ecosystem. For instance, SEBI’s 2024 circular emphasizes digital risk coverage. RBI’s cybersecurity framework recommends monitoring external threats to ensure full-spectrum risk governance.
3. DRP helps fintechs meet these expectations and stay audit-ready.
4. Third-Party Exposure Management: Your ecosystem matters. Your partners and vendors can unintentionally serve as attack vectors. DRP tracks this broader digital supply chain, flagging threats that your IRM system may not see. 
5. Workflow Integration: Leading DRP platforms offer integrations with GRC tools and IRM dashboards. This allows alerts about spoofed domains or leaked credentials to be scored, escalated, and acted upon directly within your governance workflow.

The outcome? Faster incident response, better prioritization, and more informed risk decisions. 

Key DRP Features Fintechs Should Prioritize 

As fintechs evaluate DRP tools, certain features should rise to the top of the checklist: 

1. Threat Intelligence with context: DRP is only as good as the insights it delivers. Platforms that uncover phishing kits, malicious infrastructure, or data dumps relevant to your business provide the context needed for action, not just noise. 
2. Executive Impersonation Detection: In times of high visibility, IPO announcements, funding rounds, or regulatory disclosures, executives become prime targets. DRP solutions can detect lookalike profiles and unauthorized brand mentions across platforms, triggering alerts and enabling swift action. 
3. Fake App Detection: In one notable instance, a mobile-first fintech discovered an illegitimate version of its app available on an external marketplace. Users were unknowingly submitting sensitive data. A DRP platform flagged the rogue APK within hours, enabling takedown action before large-scale damage occurred.
4. Automated Takedown and Remediation: Detection is only half the solution. Top DRP vendors offer support in taking down fake domains, removing malicious content, and coordinating with ISPs and app stores, turning alerts into action. 
5. Contextual Risk Scoring: Every alert doesn’t require a fire drill. DRP tools that tag threats by severity, relevance, and potential business impact enable smarter decisions, especially when IRM systems pull in these insights. 

Real-World Application: Proactive Protection in Action

Fintechs are no longer evaluated solely by UX or innovation speed. Today, they’re judged by how well they protect digital trust. As their digital footprint expands across mobile, web, and partner ecosystems, risk vectors multiply. Relying solely on IRM is no longer sufficient. Digital Risk Protection in fintech is not just a nice-to-have, it’s essential. It bridges the gap between internal governance and external threat intelligence, offering protection that scales with your business.

As Sahil Dhamgaye, Analyst, QKS Group, states “In today’s fintech landscape, Digital Risk Protection (DRP) is absolutely critical, and it’s no longer a nice-to-have but a foundational component of trust and operational resilience. With evolving threats like AI-powered phishing, deepfakes, and third-party vulnerabilities, fintechs must proactively detect brand impersonation, data exposure, and supply-chain weaknesses. DRP empowers firms to monitor the external attack surface, surface emerging risks in real time, and integrate those insights into a zero‑trust, incident‑response posture. Ultimately, safeguarding your digital perimeter isn’t just about compliance; it’s about preserving customer trust and ensuring sustained innovation.