There’s a moment every fintech ops leader knows. You’re scaling fast, onboarding new financial institutions, and somewhere in the middle of your third VPN misconfiguration of the week, you think — there has to be a better way.
There is. But most teams don’t stop long enough to find it. They patch the issue, document the workaround, and keep moving. The rock stays in the shoe.
Why IPSec VPN is the rock in fintech’s shoe
IPSec VPN was the default cloud networking solution for fintech-to-FI connectivity for years. And it worked — until scale exposed every limitation it was hiding.
The problem isn’t VPN itself. It’s that VPN was built for a world where one organization manages both ends of the connection. In fintech, you’re connecting your cloud application to core banking data inside community banks and credit unions you have no control over. Different firewalls, different IT teams, different expertise levels onsite — sometimes no IT staff at all.
Every new FI connection is a custom project. Every security update is a coordination exercise. Every subnet overlap is a week-long debugging session.
Where AWS Transit Gateway helps — and where it doesn’t
AWS Transit Gateway was a meaningful step forward. By acting as a central hub for AWS VPCs, it simplified the management of multiple cloud environments and reduced the complexity of connecting on-premise networks to applications spread across multiple AWS regions.
But Transit Gateway doesn’t solve the hard part of fintech connectivity: the IPSec VPN connections themselves. Managing firewall rules, overlapping RFC 1918 private subnets, and manually pushing security updates across hundreds of FI connections — Transit Gateway doesn’t touch any of that.
The hub is cleaner. The spokes are still a nightmare.
The compliance risk hiding inside your VPN stack
Beyond the operational overhead, legacy VPN creates a compliance problem that compounds with scale. CISA consistently identifies unpatched VPN vulnerabilities as among the most exploited attack vectors in financial services. When you’re patching hundreds of FI connections individually, some will always lag behind.
FFIEC examiners expect consistent, auditable security controls across every connection. VPN-based architectures make that nearly impossible to demonstrate at scale.
The zero trust VPN alternative built for fintech
Trustgrid is the zero trust VPN alternative purpose-built for fintech providers connecting to financial institutions — not a repurposed branch networking product.
Where VPN creates point-to-point tunnels you manage individually, Trustgrid creates a centrally managed, zero trust network that treats every FI connection the same way — regardless of what’s on the other end.
No IPSec, no firewall configuration at the FI
Trustgrid replaces IPSec VPN with mTLS tunnels that establish outbound connections from the FI side — no inbound firewall rules required, no configuration changes needed from the bank’s IT team. It works within the FI’s existing security posture.
The result: new FI connections go live in one day via TG Express, even at FIs with no network expertise onsite.
AWS Transit Gateway — without the VPN headaches
Trustgrid integrates natively with AWS Transit Gateway, giving fintech providers the hub-and-spoke architecture they need without the IPSec complexity. Overlapping subnets are handled automatically. Multi-region AWS deployments are natively supported. The connection layer that Transit Gateway can’t clean up — Trustgrid handles.
Zero trust across every FI connection
Every connection is authenticated with certificates — not passwords. Role-based access controls define exactly what each FI can see and access. All traffic is logged centrally and auditable across every connection, making SOC 2 Type II and FFIEC compliance consistent and demonstrable.
Patches push simultaneously across all FI connections from a single portal. No coordination with individual IT teams. No staggered rollouts. No connections left behind.
One pane of glass for 2,000+ FI connections
Every FI connection — regardless of the underlying environment — is managed, monitored, and supported from a single portal. Anomalies surface automatically. Support teams have full visibility across the entire network without logging into individual VPN devices.
That’s what a cloud vpn solution for fintech should look like.
Pull the rock out of your shoe
The fintech providers scaling to hundreds of FI connections aren’t doing it with IPSec VPN. Q2, Apiture, and dozens of others have made the switch — and what they found on the other side was faster onboarding, fewer ops incidents, and engineering teams that could finally focus on product again.
The zero trust VPN alternative exists. The only question is how long you’re willing to keep walking with the rock in your shoe.
See how Trustgrid replaces VPN for fintech-to-FI connectivity →
Chief Technology Officer
Steven Stites is the CTO and Co-Founder of Trustgrid, where he leads the vision and engineering teams behind the company’s innovative platform for secure networking and edge computing solutions. With over 20 years of expertise in network security, distributed computing, and cloud infrastructure, Steven brings deep industry experience to establishing Trustgrid as a trusted provider for secure, scalable application connectivity across FinTech, HealthTech, SaaS, and enterprise environments.
Leadership at Trustgrid
As CTO and Co-Founder, Steven drives the technical strategy, product development, and architectural direction at Trustgrid. He focuses on creating solutions that bridge modern hybrid ecosystems, empowering SaaS and cloud application providers to connect securely to on-premise resources with maximum reliability and performance. Steven’s guidance is central to Trustgrid’s integration of SD-WAN, Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), and edge computing into a unified platform, simplifying deployment, elevating data security, and supporting enterprise-grade operational scale .
Professional background
Before founding Trustgrid in 2017, Steven held senior technical leadership roles at Cisco, where he served as Senior Technical Leader for IoT Cloud and Cloud Web Security. At Cisco, he architected and led customer engagement for major SaaS security products, designing enterprise-scale networking and security solutions and overseeing technical vetting for large-scale technology acquisitions. Earlier in his career, Steven spent over a decade at IBM as a technical lead, driving development for network monitoring and distributed application performance products, and began as a software engineer researching sonar and signal processing at Applied Research Labs. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin .
Building the Future of Connectivity
Steven’s vision at Trustgrid centers on advancing secure, cloud-like connectivity across modern digital environments, ensuring frictionless integration between public cloud, data center, and on-premise resources. His background in high-performance network design and distributed security shapes Trustgrid’s commitment to eliminating complexity in deploying, monitoring, and supporting thousands of application connections. He is also an inventor, with patents for secure network technologies and is recognized as a strategic leader with a rare blend of deep technical expertise and business insight .
About Steven Stites
Steven is a passionate technology executive and product architect based in Austin, Texas. His approach emphasizes pragmatic problem-solving, strong team leadership, and client advocacy, helping organizations leverage networking and security innovations to enable secure, scalable applications. He is highly regarded for his ability to clarify complex technical challenges, mentor teams, and deliver solutions that balance technical excellence with cost efficiency. Steven is deeply interested in machine learning, cloud security, and agile product development.
Connect with Steven
https://www.linkedin.com/in/srstites/
Or
Contact him at www.trustgrid.io