Regulator-aware IT for DFSA, ADGM, and SCA-licensed firms in the UAE.
Financial services IT in the UAE operates under DFSA, ADGM Financial Services Regulatory Authority, SCA, or Central Bank oversight. Your IT environment is part of your regulatory posture: not optional, not delegated, not last on the agenda. We deliver IT for fintech, asset managers, regulated brokers, payment processors, and exchange-houses with controls designed to satisfy your supervisor.
- DFSAAware design
- ADGMRegulatory experience
- 24/7Trading-day coverage
- ISO 27001Aligned baseline
Ten capabilities sized for regulated financial operations.
Identity, MFA, conditional access
Microsoft Entra ID with hardware-token or biometric MFA, conditional access policies enforcing trusted devices and network locations, time-of-day restrictions for sensitive systems, automatic deprovisioning.
Privileged Access Management
Tiered admin model, just-in-time elevation, time-bound privileged sessions, recorded session capture for sensitive operations, regular access-review cycles.
SOC and SIEM (Microsoft Sentinel)
24/7 monitoring with Microsoft Sentinel, regulator-grade alert rules, signal correlation across endpoint/identity/email/cloud, monthly threat hunt, quarterly red-team drills.
Audit trails and log retention
Immutable, regulator-grade audit logs across all critical systems. Retention to DFSA, ADGM, SCA mandated periods. Tamper-evident storage and chain of custody documentation.
Trading-system uptime
Dealing-room workstations, trading-platform integration, market-data feed reliability, near-zero-downtime upgrade patterns, dealer-desk peak-hour standby coverage.
Cloud governance (Azure)
Azure landing zone tuned for financial workloads: data residency, encryption-in-transit/at-rest, key management via Key Vault, private endpoints by default, no public exposure of internal services.
Microsoft 365 with regulator-grade governance
Purview classification on personal and financial data, DLP rules preventing accidental external sharing, retention policies aligned to your regulator, eDiscovery readiness.
AML, KYC, transaction monitoring IT support
IT support for AML platforms, KYC systems, transaction-monitoring rule engines, sanctions-screening tools. Integration health monitoring and false-positive triage workflow.
Network design with regulator-aware segmentation
Production, test, and development environments fully segmented. Trading network isolated from corporate. Internet-facing services in a DMZ with WAF. East-west traffic monitored.
Vendor risk and outsourcing notification
Fourth-party risk register, vendor security questionnaires, regulator outsourcing notification support, contractual data-residency and incident-notification clauses.
Four reasons fintech operators consolidate IT with GR.
Regulator-vocabulary IT
We work with firms regulated by DFSA, ADGM FSRA, and SCA. We understand outsourcing notification, RegTech audit cycles, EROC requirements, and what an examiner asks for. We translate regulator-speak into IT controls and back.
Microsoft-stack depth, financial-tilt
Defender XDR, Purview, Priva, Sentinel, Entra all configured to a financial-services baseline rather than a generic SMB baseline. The difference shows in conditional access rules, retention policies, and audit-trail completeness.
No offshore L1 desk
Named UAE engineers based in Business Bay. The engineer running your tenant is the engineer who picks up the phone. Sensitive financial conversations stay onshore.
Trading-day operational rhythm
Engineers on standby during market open and close, change-freeze during sensitive trading windows, weekend windows for maintenance work. The IT operations calendar aligns with your trading calendar.
Six financial profiles, six IT shapes.
DIFC-licensed firms
DFSA-regulated asset managers, broker-dealers, advisors. DIFC freezone IT context, DFSA outsourcing requirements, regulator-grade audit trails.
ADGM-licensed firms
ADGM FSRA-regulated firms, fintech sandbox participants. Abu Dhabi Global Market context, ADGM Data Protection Regulations awareness.
Asset management and family offices
Portfolio management systems, reporting infrastructure, multi-client data segregation, secure document exchange with LPs and clients.
Payment processors and remittance
PCI-DSS scope, transaction-system uptime, sanctions screening integration, Central Bank reporting infrastructure.
Exchange-houses and money services
Central Bank-licensed money services. AML/CFT monitoring, multi-branch transaction capture, daily reconciliation, regulator reporting.
Fintech startups and scale-ups
Pre-launch infrastructure, sandbox-stage IT, scale-up architecture, security posture suitable for regulator licensing applications.
Three approaches to fintech IT, with their trade-offs.
| Feature | GR financial IT | Generic SMB MSP | In-house finance IT |
|---|---|---|---|
DFSA/ADGM literacy | |||
Microsoft Sentinel SOC | Rare | Possible | |
Regulator-grade audit trails | |||
Trading-day calendar awareness | |||
ISO 27001 aligned baseline | Generic | Varies | |
AML/KYC system IT support | |||
Vendor-risk register support | Self-managed | ||
PAM and just-in-time admin | Varies | ||
Per-firm monthly cost | Predictable | Cheaper but gaps | Highest |
From regulator-aware audit to ongoing operations.
- 1
Regulator-aware IT audit
2-3 weeks
Workshop-led discovery: current systems, regulator obligations, audit findings, outsourcing register. Output: written gap report mapped to your regulator framework with prioritised remediation roadmap.
- 2
Foundation build
4-8 weeks
Identity baseline, PAM model, Sentinel SOC operational, Purview policies, network segmentation review, audit-log retention reconfigured, vendor risk register populated.
- 3
Operational embedding
2-3 weeks
Trading-day standby rotation activated, monthly KPI report shape agreed, change-freeze calendar aligned to your trading schedule, escalation matrix to your CISO/COO.
- 4
Quarterly regulator-readiness cycle
Ongoing
Quarterly audit-evidence pack, vulnerability scan, threat-hunt report, vendor risk register refresh. Annual ISO 27001 internal-audit support, regulator-inspection support on demand.
“We are a DFSA-licensed asset manager. We had been running on generic SMB IT for three years and our last DFSA-themed review surfaced material findings on access controls, audit trails, and outsourcing oversight. GR rebuilt our environment in eight weeks: Entra-based access, Sentinel monitoring, Purview classification, vendor risk register. Our next thematic review closed cleanly. The cost of getting it right was smaller than the cost of not.”
What financial firms ask before engaging.
Services that pair with financial IT engagements.
Book a regulator-aware IT review and get a written gap report.
A two-to-three week structured audit covering identity, audit trails, monitoring, network segmentation, vendor risk, and Microsoft baseline against your regulator framework. Output: prioritised remediation roadmap.
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