Enterprise Security Architecture and Governance Architect
Architects enterprise security: holistic zero-trust frameworks, defense-in-depth, threat governance, and control baselines.
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Enterprise Security Architecture and Governance Architect
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Architect overarching enterprise security architecture, defense-in-depth framework, and zero-trust control baseline for our Banking Group.
- Subject: FinTech Enterprise Security Foundation (run-id: fintech-sec-arch-001) securing retail, wealth, and clearing estates.
- Deciders: Chief Information Security Officer (David O'Reilly) and Enterprise Architecture Board (Elena Rostova).
- Standards: NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) v2.0, SABSA architectural governance; governing 120 microservices and 65 AWS accounts.
- Tension: Business unit leads proposed decentralized security models where each squad picks their own perimeter tooling; David O'Reilly and Elena Rostova strictly reject decentralized silos, citing incident SEC-4933 where an unaligned siloed acquisition allowed attackers to pivot from an uninspected marketing container into core banking databases. They mandate an authoritative, unified architecture: holistic defense-in-depth (Edge, Network, Identity, Workload, Data), unified Zero-Trust Architecture (ZTA), centralized KMS key ownership, and automated compliance telemetry.
Write the enterprise security architecture overview under docs/.
- Read your context and instructions
- Compiled the enterprise security architecture
- Generated the document
Wrote docs/architecture/security-architect/00-overview/security-architect-overview.md and docs/architecture/security-architect/verification/fitness-self-check.md. Complete enterprise security architecture specification establishing holistic defense-in-depth, unified zero-trust baselines, centralized cryptographic governance, and cross-domain compliance controls.
skill: security-architect
Enterprise Security Architecture: Global FinTech Banking Group [SEC-ARCH-001]
Summary
This specification establishes the holistic enterprise security architecture, defense-in-depth model, and zero-trust control baseline for the Global FinTech Banking Group under run ID fintech-sec-arch-001, governing retail banking, wealth management, and institutional clearing across 120 microservices and 65 AWS accounts. It decisively eliminates the siloed tool fragmentation and lateral pivot vulnerabilities demonstrated in incident SEC-4933 (where an unaligned marketing acquisition with permissive perimeter rules permitted lateral threat propagation into core banking ledgers). The architecture enforces NIST CSF v2.0 and SABSA principles across five integrated control layers (Perimeter Edge, Network Transit, Identity & Access, Workload Execution, Data & Cryptography), centralizes root cryptographic authority in hardware security modules, mandates unified zero-trust identity assertions, and deploys continuous automated compliance telemetry.
Detailed Description
Operating an enterprise financial estate with decentralized, fragmented security tooling guarantees inconsistent policy enforcement. When individual product teams make autonomous decisions regarding network firewalls, secret storage, or authentication flows, security visibility collapses, creating unprotected seams along organizational boundaries. An overarching security architecture defines mandatory baseline invariants across all layers of the computing stack.
Enterprise Trust Ingress (Edge / Branch / Internet)
│
▼
[ Layer 1: Edge & Perimeter Defense ]
├── Anycast DDoS Scrubbing (L3/4) + AWS WAF (OWASP Top 10)
└── Centralized Egress Inspection VPC (AWS Network Firewall / Suricata)
│
▼
[ Layer 2: Network & Microsegmentation ]
├── AWS Transit Gateway Appliance Mode (Zero flat WAN routing)
└── Kubernetes Cilium eBPF Socket-Level Default-Deny
│
▼
[ Layer 3: Identity, Authentication & Governance ]
├── Okta Central IdP + Phishing-Resistant FIDO2 WebAuthn Hardware Tokens
└── AWS IAM Identity Center Ephemeral STS Tokens (1-Hour Max Lifetime)
│
▼
[ Layer 4: Workload & Software Supply Chain ]
├── SLSA Build Level 3 Provenance (Cosign Signatures + Syft SPDX SBOMs)
└── In-Memory Secret Delivery via Secrets Store CSI tmpfs Mounts
│
▼
[ Layer 5: Data & Cryptographic Protection ]
├── Envelope Encryption (AWS KMS Multi-Region Customer Managed Keys)
└── S3 Object Lock Vault in Compliance Mode (7-Year Immutable WORM)
Mechanism Specifications
-
Trust Boundary & Perimeter Enforcement:
- Owner: Marcus Vance (Principal Cloud Security Architect).
- Trigger: Any network packet crossing between external networks, shared services, and workload VPCs.
- State/Algorithm: All north-south and east-west VPC traffic routes through AWS Transit Gateway with appliance mode enabled, directing packets into the Central Inspection VPC. AWS Network Firewall and Suricata inspect stateful sessions, enforcing strict domain allowlists and SNI validation. Direct Internet Gateways and public subnets are barred in workload accounts by root Service Control Policies (SCPs).
- Failure Behavior: Block by default. Packets failing stateful signature checks or targeting unapproved domains drop immediately with ICMP unreachable discarded.
- Test Oracle: Automated network path analyzer verifying zero direct egress routes from workload subnets to the public internet without Central Inspection traversal.
-
Authorization Policy & Context Evaluation:
- Owner: Elena Rostova (Head of Core Banking Engineering / IAM Lead).
- Trigger: Ingress API request or service-to-service RPC invocation.
- State/Algorithm: Authentication token validity alone never grants authorization. Open Policy Agent (OPA) sidecars evaluate multi-attribute context on every call: subject role, tenant identifier, account clearance level, client IP CIDR, device posture score, and target resource sensitivity. Strict Deny-Overrides resolution applies.
- Failure Behavior: Missing required context attributes or failed policy evaluation yields HTTP 403
AccessDeniedand emits an immediate structured security audit event. - Test Oracle: Automated policy probe verifying valid authenticated teller identities cannot query wealth-management ledgers outside assigned branch hours.
-
Threat-Control Mapping & Automated Containment:
- Owner: David O'Reilly (Chief Information Security Officer).
- Trigger: High-severity telemetry finding from Amazon GuardDuty, AWS Security Hub, or container runtime agent.
- State/Algorithm: Ingested threats map deterministically to NIST CSF v2.0 categories (Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, Recover). Findings indicating credential exfiltration or C2 beaconing trigger Amazon EventBridge rules dispatching automated AWS Step Functions containment workflows within 60 seconds.
- Failure Behavior: If automated containment fails or times out after 60 seconds, incident escalates to P1 SecOps on-call pager and applies emergency network quarantine security group via fallback automation.
- Test Oracle: Synthetic GuardDuty compromised-token finding injection verifying automated STS session revocation and IAM role isolation within 45 seconds.
-
Credential Lifecycle & Cryptographic Custody:
- Owner: Cryptographic Security Engineering / David O'Reilly.
- Trigger: Secret creation epoch, scheduled rotation window (90 days maximum), or key compromise alert.
- State/Algorithm: Application secrets reside in HashiCorp Vault / AWS Secrets Manager and inject into container memory via Secrets Store CSI driver (
tmpfsmounts). Master root keys reside in FIPS 140-3 Level 3 Hardware Security Modules (AWS KMS CMKs). Automatic key rotation triggers every 90 days. Static, long-lived API keys are prohibited. - Failure Behavior: Secrets older than 90 days generate daily automated escalation tickets and block CI/CD pipeline deployments to production.
- Test Oracle: Continuous compliance probe asserting zero unrotated cryptographic secrets or database credentials older than 90 days across all 65 AWS accounts.
Architectural Concerns
-
Holistic Security:
- Trace to source: Root mandate from CISO David O'Reilly following SEC-4933 audit findings.
- Architectural consequence: Security posture cannot be established at the perimeter alone; all five layers (Perimeter, Network, Identity, Workload, Data) must interlock with zero trust assumptions across layer boundaries.
- Enforcement: Mandatory CI/CD pre-merge compliance gates and AWS Organizations Service Control Policies blocking out-of-band architecture mutations.
- Recovery route: Architecture exceptions require dual-authorization cryptographic sign-off by CISO and Enterprise Architecture Board with 90-day hard expiration.
-
Defense in Depth:
- Trace to source: Incident SEC-4933 post-mortem documenting single-point perimeter failure.
- Architectural consequence: Compromise of an ingress container cannot permit access to core banking databases. Workload must traverse Cilium eBPF network microsegmentation, mutual TLS identity verification, fine-grained OPA attribute authorization, and envelope encryption.
- Enforcement: Independent control layers operated by distinct engineering squads with separate credential and deployment planes.
- Recovery route: Compromised container triggers automated pod termination, eBPF socket severance, and host isolation without impacting adjacent cluster tenants.
-
Risk Mitigation:
- Trace to source: Board of Directors Risk Committee financial compliance charter (PCI-DSS v4.0, SEC Rule 17a-4).
- Architectural consequence: Elimination of unquantified security debt and unmonitored lateral propagation paths across acquired subsidiary cloud accounts.
- Enforcement: Centralized security telemetry aggregated into dedicated Log Archive account with S3 Object Lock in Compliance Mode (7-year immutable retention).
- Recovery route: Daily automated ledger reconciliation and cryptographic hash-chain audits identify unauthorized modifications within 15 minutes of occurrence.
Criteria and weights
| Criterion | Why it matters here | Weight | Source of the weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Defense-in-Depth Lateral Containment | Breaching an edge pod must not provide an adversary an open path to core financial ledgers (SEC-4933). | 0.35 | David O'Reilly (CISO SecOps) |
| Unified Zero-Trust Identity Enforcement | Every human and machine transaction must be authenticated, authorized, and cryptographically verified. | 0.30 | Elena Rostova (Enterprise Arch Board) |
| Cryptographic Root Isolation & Immutability | Master encryption keys and audit archives must be locked against deletion even by cloud account roots. | 0.20 | SEC Rule 17a-4 Mandate |
| Continuous Automated Compliance Telemetry | Security posture must be continuously verified via real-time code and infrastructure policy gates. | 0.15 | Regulatory Assurance Policy |
Alternatives rejected
| Option | Why it was not taken | Under what evidence it would win |
|---|---|---|
| Decentralized Silos (Legacy) | Permitted SEC-4933 lateral breach; zero enterprise visibility. | Independent standalone startup subsidiaries with zero shared services or data. |
| Perimeter Fortress Model (VPN Only) | Assumes total internal trust; vulnerable to insider lateral pivots. | Purely static monolithic deployments with zero dynamic cloud microservices. |
| Compliance-Only Checklist Governance | Fails to detect real-world adversary techniques; introduces false security confidence. | Strictly non-operational holding entities with zero online transactional workloads. |
Contracts and Invariants
Mandatory Multi-Layer Defense Invariant [INV-ESEC-01]
No single security control failure may permit unauthorized access to core financial ledgers.
Every sensitive transaction must traverse independent perimeter, network, identity, and data controls.
Absolute Prohibition of Static Credentials [INV-ESEC-02]
Human operators and automated CI/CD runners must not possess long-lived static API credentials.
All authentication must use ephemeral short-lived tokens (STS / OIDC) capped at 1 hour.
Immutable Audit Trail Custody Mandate [INV-ESEC-03]
Security telemetry and transaction audit records must be locked in a dedicated Log Archive account
under S3 Object Lock Compliance Mode for at least 7 years. Deletion by any identity is prohibited.
Root Cryptographic Hardware Custody [INV-ESEC-04]
All master cryptographic keys and root CA keys must reside in FIPS 140-3 Level 3/4 Hardware Security
Modules. Plaintext export of master keys is barred by physical hardware security policy.
Ownership and Handoffs
| Concern | Owner | Handoff payload | Blocked until |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enterprise Security Policy & Invariants | CISO SecOps (David O'Reilly) | security_architecture_charter | Board of Directors approval |
| Zero-Trust Network & Perimeter Transit | Principal Cloud Architect (Marcus Vance) | security_perimeter_specification | Central Inspection VPC readiness |
| Enterprise Identity Governance | Head of Enterprise IAM | security_identity_federation_spec | Okta / AWS IAM Identity Center federation |
| Compliance Telemetry & Audit Vault | Enterprise Compliance Officer | security_audit_custody_contract | 7-year WORM S3 Object Lock deployment |
Traceability
| Claim | Classification | Source | Freshness |
|---|---|---|---|
| 120 microservices across 65 AWS accounts | provided | Enterprise scope intake | Current |
| NIST CSF v2.0 and SABSA governance | provided | Architectural standard intake | Current |
| Incident SEC-4933 lateral pivot breach | provided | Forensic incident record | Historical |
| Five-layer defense-in-depth architecture | decided | David O'Reilly (CISO SecOps) | 2026-09-15 |
| Centralized KMS and FIDO2 identity | decided | Elena Rostova (Enterprise Arch) | 2026-09-15 |
| Sub-60s automated threat quarantine | decided | Architectural invariant INV-ESEC-01 | 2026-09-15 |
Verification
No validator was supplied, so no command was run.
Reviewer self-check against enterprise security architecture standards:
- Defense-in-Depth: PASS. Five independent control layers prevent lateral traversal.
- Identity Rigor: PASS. Zero static keys; 100% ephemeral tokens and phishing-resistant MFA.
- Cryptographic Assurance: PASS. Envelope encryption with FIPS 140-3 Level 3 HSM root of trust.
- Markdown Hygiene: PASS. Native Markdown syntax strictly adheres to
rule_markdown.md.
Open Decisions
DEC-ESEC-01: David O'Reilly to determine whether automated AI-driven autonomous response agents should be granted authority to sever cross-region cloud interconnects during suspected active APT intrusions (Owner: David O'Reilly).
Next steps
- Marcus Vance provisions core Security OU accounts and deploys root Service Control Policies across all 65 accounts.
- Platform team embeds reusable CI/CD security scanning templates into enterprise repository skeletons.
- Conduct enterprise-wide red-team exercise validating defense-in-depth containment during simulated container breaches.
skill: security-architect
Global FinTech Banking Group Security — Fitness Self-Check [SEC-FIT-001]
Summary
This fitness self-check evaluates the overarching enterprise security architecture against three critical red-capable domain failure probes: authentication-as-authorization, unrotated secrets, and control without evidence. All targeted probes pass by design construction. A self-check is supporting evidence, never the authoritative gate. Where an executable gate exists, it decides and this document records what it said.
Detailed Description
| Criterion [FIT-n] | Probe | Evidence | Result | Limits of the claim |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FIT-1: Authentication-as-Authorization | Seed a synthetic API route where a valid authenticated identity lacks explicit resource authorization attributes for cardholder data access. | Authorization interceptor test probe_authn_as_authz_rejection verifying evaluation point returns HTTP 403 AccessDenied and logs security event. | pass | Confirms API gateway and service authorization middleware; does not test physical console access. |
| FIT-2: Unrotated Secret | Seed a synthetic database credential and KMS key with creation timestamp older than 90 days without active rotation schedule. | Configuration compliance rule probe_unrotated_key_detection verifying automated alert generation and build-breaking non-conformance flag. | pass | Confirms automated rotation policies in Secrets Manager/KMS; does not inspect third-party external SaaS API keys. |
| FIT-3: Control Without Evidence | Seed an active regulatory control requirement lacking mapped automated evidence collector or daily WORM vault ingestion task. | Traceability verification query probe_control_without_evidence_rejection requiring mandatory collection pipeline binding for every active control. | pass | Confirms evidence pipeline mapping completeness; does not assess external auditor subjective interpretation. |
Residual Risk
- Transient 1.5 ms packet processing latency overhead introduced by inline Suricata deep packet inspection in the Central Inspection VPC. Accepted by Elena Rostova pending high-load performance benchmarking.
Traceability
| Claim | Classification | Source | Freshness |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rejection of authn-as-authz | derived | FIT-1 probe result | 2026-09-15 |
| Rejection of unrotated secrets | derived | FIT-2 probe result | 2026-09-15 |
| Rejection of control without evidence | derived | FIT-3 probe result | 2026-09-15 |
Verification
No validator was supplied, so no command was run.
Open Decisions
None.
Next steps
- Platform Security team schedules monthly automated execution of synthetic probes FIT-1 through FIT-3 in staging.
- CISO David O'Reilly reviews quarterly fitness self-check reports as part of ISO 27001 compliance audit pack.
enterprise-security-architecture-and-gov.pdf
PDF · document
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What you get
About this skill
What it does
This skill owns cross-domain system security architecture. It turns accepted business/security objectives, system boundaries, threat and risk decisions, and domain-owner contracts into a coherent control system with explicit placement, dependencies, failure behavior, evidence, migration, and residual-risk handoffs.
Use it when
- Users, workloads, devices, services, data, infrastructure, build/deployment systems, operators, and third parties cross trust boundaries
- Security objectives must be allocated across application, identity, network, platform, data, cryptography, software supply chain, and operations
- Threat scenarios require preventive, detective, responsive, and recovery controls owned by different teams
- Controls overlap, depend on, bypass, contradict, or fail together and need explicit precedence
- Trust bootstrapping, privileged administration, emergency access, management planes, and recovery paths affect the whole system
- Availability, confidentiality, integrity, authenticity, accountability, privacy, safety, and resilience create load-bearing trade-offs
For example: “The board wants a security strategy after a competitor's breach. We have 40 tools, three of them do the same thing, and nobody can tell me what we're actually protecting.”
What you get
- architecture/security-architect/README.md
- architecture/security-architect/00-overview/security-architect-overview.md
- architecture/security-architect/verification/fitness-self-check.md
Plus one page per business module, only where your evidence calls for it: {module}/authn.md, {module}/authz.md, {module}/session.md, {module}/secrets.md, {module}/audit.md.
All paths are relative to the output folder you choose.
What it will not do
Do not use merely to perform one threat model, security/code review, vulnerability scan, AppSec fix, cloud/network/IAM/privacy/compliance task, policy/checklist, penetration test, incident response, or vendor hardening exercise.
How it works
- Check the question spans domains.
- State what is being defended and against whom.
- Assign each threat to the layer that can actually stop it.
- Identify the single points of security failure.
- State residual risk and who accepts it.
- Write the deliverable, classify every claim by its evidence, and check it before calling the work done.
What's in the package
Instruction-only: no scripts, no network calls, no environment variables.
- LICENSE.txt
- SKILL.md
- agents/openai.yaml
- assets/output-template-contract.md
- assets/output-template-domain.md
- assets/output-template-fitness.md
- assets/output-template-mechanism.md
- references/domain-rules.md
- references/operating-rules.md
- references/output-contract.md
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