Business internet for finance & insurance
Financial services lose meaningful revenue per minute of downtime. Compliance scope is broad. SLA tightness, security, and audit trails matter more than they do anywhere else.
Top concerns we hear from finance buyers
- • Outages during market hours (real revenue impact)
- • Compliance: SOX, PCI-DSS, GLBA, state insurance regs
- • Audit trails for security events (regulator-requested)
- • Encryption requirements (data in transit and at rest)
- • Trust profile: low (5.3/10) — extensive due diligence orientation
What you actually need
DIA fiber with the tightest SLA available (99.99% minimum, 100% credit-backed if possible). Redundant connectivity at all primary locations. Managed firewall with full logging and SIEM integration. Encrypted voice. Documented incident response plan. SOC 2 Type II certifications from any vendor in the data path.
Compliance considerations
Compliance scope depends on your specific business. Public companies need SOX controls. Anyone handling card data needs PCI-DSS. Insurance carriers face state-by-state regulations. Wealth managers fall under SEC and state rules. The internet circuit isn't directly regulated, but the security posture around it absolutely is. Vendor SOC 2 reports are commonly required.
Recommended solution
Primary: Lumen or Cogent DIA fiber with 99.99-100% SLA. Secondary: redundant fiber from a different carrier (true diversity matters for financial use cases). SD-WAN with sub-second failover. Managed security with full logging (Fortinet, Palo Alto, Cisco). Voice via UCaaS with call recording and compliance archive.
Carriers we recommend for finance
Lumen
Tier-1 backbone with strong peering. SOC 2 audited managed services.
Cogent
100% uptime SLA with day-per-hour credit structure — strongest in industry. Excellent for trading-floor adjacency.
AT&T Business
Premium pricing but mature compliance documentation. Common in enterprise finance.
Verizon Business
Strong in Northeast finance hubs. Premium positioning.
📞 Voice considerations
Call recording is often regulator-required (FINRA, SEC). UCaaS providers offer compliance recording add-ons. Microsoft Teams Phone with compliance recording is increasingly common. Maintain redundant voice paths — a stuck call queue during market open is a real loss.
🛡 Security considerations
Highest bar of any industry we serve. Required baseline: managed firewall with intrusion prevention and full traffic logging, SIEM integration (Splunk, Sentinel, etc.), MFA everywhere, encrypted endpoints, regular pen testing, documented vendor risk management, and incident response with regulator-notification procedures. Many financial firms layer SASE on top of traditional defense for distributed workforces.
Get a finance-aware quote
Tell Byte you're a financebusiness and we'll route you toward carriers and configurations that match your industry's reliability and compliance needs.
FAQ
What SLA do we actually need?
99.99% minimum for primary. 100% with credit-backed terms (Cogent) is worth the premium for trading-floor or market-hours revenue. Pair with a diverse-carrier backup so even SLA-busting outages don't take you down.
Do we need diverse carriers or is SD-WAN with cable backup enough?
For most non-trading financial firms, fiber primary + cable secondary with SD-WAN is enough. For trading or any sub-second-revenue use case, true carrier diversity (different fiber providers, different physical paths) is the standard.
What about PCI-DSS scope?
PCI scope is determined by what touches cardholder data, not by your carrier choice. Your network architecture (segmentation, encryption, access controls) determines scope. Carrier choice doesn't change PCI requirements directly — but it does affect what evidence you can provide auditors.
How do we get SOC 2 reports from carriers?
Most managed-services products from Tier-1 carriers have SOC 2 Type II reports available under NDA. Request from your account team. The basic transit circuit usually doesn't have a SOC 2 report — it's the managed services around it that do.