Updated: 08 May 2026
The term sheet arrives. The Series B is oversubscribed. The investor's technical due diligence team completed their review last week.
There is one condition.
The authentication architecture needs to be addressed before close. Specifically: the CTO's production access, the developer team's authentication to payment processing systems, and the third-party integration credentials for the lending API.
The founder reads the condition twice.
Series B and growth-stage investors in Indian fintech now routinely include authentication architecture review as part of technical due diligence, citing RBI IT Governance obligations, DPDPA data security requirements, and SOC 2 compliance as baseline expectations for companies handling payment or lending data.
The review is not hostile. It is logical. An investor taking a significant position in a fintech company handling personal financial data is exposed to the same regulatory and breach risk as the company. The authentication architecture is where that risk lives.
Fintech companies build fast. The authentication architecture designed for a 10-person seed-stage team does not scale securely to a 200-person growth-stage company without deliberate effort. The CTO's broad production access made sense when the CTO was also the only engineer. The developer team's direct access to the payment processing environment made sense before there was a dedicated security function.
Indian fintechs processing payment data, lending data, or investment data are subject to RBI IT Governance Master Direction requirements for MFA on critical information systems alongside DPDPA reasonable security safeguards obligations. The due diligence team found both gaps in the same access register.
In Proactive's Cisco Duo deployments across fintech environments in Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Delhi NCR, the credential audit conducted before deployment consistently surfaces access rights that reflect the company's earlier stage: production access never scoped down, shared credentials on payment systems, and third-party API access never formally reviewed.
Cisco Duo, Cisco's identity security platform, enforces named individual MFA across payment processing systems, lending platforms, internal admin tools, and third-party API access without requiring those systems to be rebuilt. Named individual accounts replace shared credentials. Access is scoped to what each role requires. The authentication logs satisfy both RBI IT Governance requirements and the investor's due diligence condition.
Proactive is a Cisco Preferred Security Partner deploying Cisco Duo for Indian fintech companies across Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Delhi NCR: RBI compliance deployments, Series B security conditions, and DPDPA access controls.
The Series B is oversubscribed.
The condition is one deployment away from being satisfied.
Talk to a Proactive Cisco Duo specialist. Write to [email protected].
We'll get back to you shortly.
