Fractional CISO and security program advisory for digital asset companies, stablecoin platforms, and fintechs integrating crypto — built for boards, regulators, and enterprise counterparties.
Digital asset companies live with a risk profile that conventional security programs don't cover. Your most critical assets are keys, not just data. Your most dangerous vendors are exchanges and custodians, not just SaaS apps. Your regulator may be a state money transmitter examiner, NYDFS, or — if you issue or integrate payment stablecoins — a new federal framework that is still being written. And your board is asking questions that generic security consultants have never had to answer.
NTD Consulting provides fractional CISO and cybersecurity leadership for digital asset, stablecoin, and crypto payments companies. We build and run the enterprise security program: custody governance, key management, wallet controls, API security, vendor and counterparty risk, incident response, and the reporting your board, your investors, and your regulators expect.
To be clear about what we are not: this is not a smart-contract audit practice. Code audits are a specialized discipline, and we'll tell you honestly when you need one, then help you scope the work and manage the firms that do it well. Our practice is the security leadership around it — the program that decides how keys are held, who can move funds, which counterparties you trust, and what you tell your board when something breaks.
The practice is led by a former CTO/CIO who served as CISO of a Nasdaq-listed crypto FinTech platform through SPAC, IPO, and public-company cybersecurity disclosure, after SVP roles at a global ATM and payments operator. That's operator experience with keys, custody, and public-market scrutiny — not a slide deck about blockchain.
The full surface we build, govern, and defend — scaled to your stage and footprint.
Custody model design and oversight across hot, warm, and cold wallets, qualified custodians, MPC, and HSM signing — with quorum policies, key ceremonies, and privileged access that hold up in an audit.
Address allowlisting, withdrawal limits, and transaction-approval workflows — enforced in policy and in code, with evidence your enterprise customers and examiners can review.
Exchange and custody API keys treated as crown-jewel credentials: vaulted, scoped, rotated, and monitored, with least-privilege access for treasury and operations.
Due diligence and contracts for custodians, exchanges, liquidity providers, analytics firms, and node infrastructure — plus concentration risk tracking across the whole chain.
Oversight of monitoring tools, sanctions and OFAC screening governance, travel-rule data flows, and the audit evidence that shows your controls actually operate.
Key-compromise, wallet-drain, and exchange-failure scenarios built into your response plan, tested in tabletops, with forensics and law-enforcement coordination paths ready before you need them.
SOC 2 mapped to digital asset controls, NYDFS Part 500 and virtual currency licensing expectations, state MTL exams, and NIST-grounded program documentation.
A security narrative for directors and investors: custody status, key inventory, vendor concentrations, incidents and near-misses, and the regulatory timeline ahead.
Most digital asset losses trace back to keys: how they're generated, stored, approved, and moved. This is the center of the practice.
Every custody model is a tradeoff between operational speed and compromise risk. Self-custody gives you control and puts the entire burden on your controls. Qualified custodians move the burden to a third party and introduce concentration risk you now have to govern. MPC and HSM-based signing reduce single points of failure but add operational complexity that fails quietly when it's not rehearsed. The right answer depends on your flows, your volumes, and your regulator — and it needs to be written down with a risk rationale, not inherited from whatever the engineering team built first.
We build and review the control set that makes whichever model you choose defensible:
For stablecoin-specific architecture, NIST's IR 8408, Understanding Stablecoin Technology and Related Security Considerations, gives security teams a solid technical foundation: how stablecoins are architected, where trust sits, and which controls each design implies. We use it the way we use NIST CSF for broader programs — as a common language between your engineers, your auditors, and your board.
Stablecoins are becoming enterprise financial infrastructure, and the security expectations are rising with them.
If you're an issuer, the control surface starts at mint and burn: privileged access to issuance functions, quorum around reserve operations, reserve transparency and attestation oversight, oracle dependencies that can move real money, and Proof of Reserves controls that hold up to external scrutiny.
If you're a fintech integrating stablecoin payments, your surface looks different: API security on the rails you depend on, settlement reconciliation controls, counterparty due diligence on issuers and liquidity partners, sanctions and OFAC screening governance, and transaction-monitoring oversight that a bank partner or examiner can inspect.
The regulatory frame is moving fast. The GENIUS Act, enacted in July 2025, created the first federal framework for payment stablecoins, and the implementing rules are still being written by regulators. Issuers and integrators alike should expect examiner-style questions about how keys are managed, how reserves and flows are monitored, and how sanctions obligations are enforced — and the companies that can produce evidence now will move faster than the ones writing policies after the fact.
We're advisors, not lawyers — your counsel owns regulatory positions. But we speak both languages, and we build the security documentation your counsel, your auditor, and your bank partners need to give confident answers.
On a digital asset platform, an exchange or custody API key can move money. That makes it a privileged credential — and most companies treat it like a config value. We bring API key management up to the standard you'd apply to domain admin: vaulted storage, per-service scoping, rotation schedules, withdrawal permissions matched to least privilege, alerting on new key creation and permission changes, and kill-switch runbooks your on-call engineers can execute at 2 a.m.
The same discipline extends to the cloud underneath: IAM design for treasury operations, secrets management for signing services, network segmentation around wallet infrastructure, and audit trails that tie every movement of funds to a human approval.
Digital asset companies outsource more of their risk chain than almost any other fintech: custodians hold the keys, exchanges provide liquidity, market makers move the book, analytics firms screen the transactions, and node providers carry the infrastructure. Each one is a third-party risk decision — and your enterprise customers and bank partners will increasingly hold you accountable for all of them.
We build the third-party risk program this ecosystem needs: due diligence with questions that matter for crypto vendors (insurance terms, custody segregation, withdrawal-test evidence, incident history), contract requirements that survive legal review, concentration risk tracking across counterparties, and ongoing monitoring instead of annual checkbox reviews. When a bank partner or enterprise customer sends a 250-question assessment about your digital asset operations, you'll have real answers.
Generic incident response plans don't cover what actually happens in this industry. We build and test response for the scenarios that matter:
Every plan gets broken safely in a tabletop with your actual leadership team before it needs to work in anger. The principal has run incident response inside a Nasdaq-listed crypto platform — the escalation paths, the legal coordination, and the 2 a.m. judgment calls are familiar territory.
Nothing in digital asset security is exotic — the discipline is mapping well-understood controls onto an unfamiliar asset class:
Trust services criteria mapped to custody, key management, and transaction controls — the report enterprise customers and bank partners ask for first.
NIST CSF as the program skeleton, and NIST IR 8408 as the stablecoin-specific technical reference your engineers and auditors share.
Part 500 cybersecurity requirements apply to virtual currency businesses — and New York's virtual currency licensing regime adds its own security evidence demands.
Security sections of money transmitter exams answered with documentation that survives examiner follow-ups across your licensing states.
If you're facing a customer security questionnaire or a bank partner's due diligence now, our security audit response service gets you evidence-backed answers fast.
Boards of digital asset companies don't need a blockchain lecture. They need a risk picture they can read in ten minutes: where the keys are and who controls them, custody and vendor concentrations, incident and near-miss history, the regulatory timeline and where evidence gaps sit, and what security spend is buying. Investors in this sector now ask pointed security questions in diligence — a defensible program with documented controls is a valuation conversation, not a compliance chore.
We deliver this as a quarterly operating rhythm — the same board-pack discipline we bring to every fractional CISO engagement, tuned to the risk profile of digital assets. If you're public or heading that direction, the reporting folds directly into your cybersecurity disclosure posture.
Digital asset security rarely stands alone. Most clients combine it with:
Payment rails, PCI scope, bank partner oversight, and regulatory exams — the broader fintech program around your digital asset exposure.
Fraud models, monitoring AI, and customer-facing AI features need the same governance discipline your keys get — inventory, policy, oversight, and board reporting.
The full vCISO engagement: risk register, incident response, vendor risk, audit readiness, and security leadership on retainer.
The intersection is the point: fintech, digital assets, and AI security governed by one experienced operator. Few firms can credibly cover all three. Related reading we'd point you to first: Stablecoin Security for Fintech CISOs: Custody, Keys, APIs, Third Parties, and Incident Response — upcoming in our Insights library.
No — and we say so up front. Smart-contract auditing is a specialized code-review discipline with its own expert firms. What we do is the enterprise security program around it: custody governance, key management, vendor oversight, incident response, and audit readiness. We'll tell you when you need an audit, help you scope it, and make sure its findings actually land in your controls.
The same things an in-house CISO would, scoped to days per month: own the security program, govern custody and key management, run vendor and counterparty risk, prepare audits and exams, lead incident response, and report to your board. The difference is the risk surface — keys and counterparties instead of endpoints and SaaS.
Yes. Moving keys to a custodian is a control decision, not an abdication. You still own custodian selection and oversight, integration security, concentration risk, withdrawal approval flows on your side, and the incident response plan for when the custodian has a problem. Examiners and bank partners ask about your oversight, not just the custodian's certification.
That's a frequent trigger. We prepare evidence-backed responses covering custody, key management, sanctions governance, and vendor risk — the questions crypto companies get asked. For urgent questionnaires, see our security audit response service.
Yes. NYDFS Part 500 applies to virtual currency businesses, and state MTL exams carry security sections that trip up unprepared companies. We build the documentation once, mapped to every examiner and partner who asks.
Fractional CISO engagements start at $5,000/month, scoped by time, complexity, and the executive involvement your situation needs. Most digital asset companies at this stage need a few days a month of senior judgment — not a full-time hire.
Talk to an operator who has held the CISO seat inside a Nasdaq-listed crypto company. Schedule a free 30-minute consultation and we'll map where your program stands against what your counterparties, examiners, and board will ask.
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