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How a global financial messaging network secured millions of containers and defeated alert fatigue. Principal Product Marketing Manager For a network that helps the financial community securely exchange payment instructions representing the equivalent of the world's GDP every 3 days, security isn't just a concern, it's the number one priority. At Red Hat Summit 2026, Praveen Siddu, Senior Platform Architect at Swift, and Otmane Benali, Container Platform Product Owner at Swift, alongside Ryan Riley, Senior Solutions Architect at Red Hat, shared how they modernized container platform security. Their journey details how Swift, a financial cooperative connecting over 11,500 institutions in more than 200 countries, established zero-touch automation to manage security policies and vulnerabilities across hundreds of clusters. Figure 1. Otmane Benali, Container Platform Product Owner, and Praveen Siddu, Senior Platform Architect with Swift, alongside Ryan Riley, Senior Solutions Architect with Red Hat Managing millions of container images across multiple data centers presents a massive tracking challenge. If even 1 image contains a critical vulnerability, finding where that risk lives across a sprawling hybrid cloud environment is a complex task. Doing so manually is impossible. Balancing massive transaction volume with rigorous security. For Swift, downtime or a security breach carries global macroeconomic consequences. During the session, the team illuminated the sheer scale of their operational environment. Every 3 days, the equivalent of the world's GDP passes through the Swift network. That indicates the scale of the economies and supply chains that count on this transaction service, making availability and security its highest priorities. Otmane Benali Container Platform Product Owner, Swift To protect this critical flow, the platform team deployed Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security for Kubernetes. This technology secures workloads across the entire software lifecycle, spanning the build, deployment, and runtime phases. Reversing the architectural flow to eliminate network congestion. A common pitfall in enterprise security is building architectures where a central configuration management database (CMDB) must reach out and poll every individual cluster for vulnerability data. As Swift's network grew, this pull-based method consumed excessive network bandwidth and introduced significant operational complexity. To solve this, the engineering team designed a stateless central architecture that reversed the flow of information. The architecture consists of an agent running locally in each Red Hat OpenShift environment. This agent gathers container image data and sends it to a central object store. A central scanning job then queries a single Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security central instance to match the images against known Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures entries. This centralized engine enriches the data with ownership mapping from Git and sends the clean, prioritized risk profile back to the CMDB. By preparing the security data centrally and feeding it directly into the database, the team simplified the architecture so that it could remain resilient. If any cluster is deleted, the system heals automatically because the central state is easily rebuilt from code. Automating regression testing for security policies. Upgrading security tools or modifying policies can sometimes introduce unexpected disruptions or false positives, which increases alert fatigue for application developers. To prevent this, the team instituted an automated regression testing pipeline. Before promoting a new policy or a new version of Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security from development to testing and production, the platform team runs it in a sandbox environment. This sandbox contains test workloads that are designed to trigger specific policy violations. The team verifies that the new version of Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security accurately flags the simulated violations. This regression check prevents security updates from disrupting standard developer workflows or creating unnecessary noise. By combining daily automated scans of running images, including short-lived pods, with zero-touch certificate management via Argo CD and HashiCorp Vault, the cooperative has successfully minimized manual security tasks. Security teams only interject when a high-priority vulnerability is verified, allowing application developers to maintain velocity while preserving global trust. Next steps. Ready to strengthen your container security and reduce operational noise? Choose the path that fits your organization's goals: * Read the technical details: Learn how to implement lifecycle security and policy guardrails by downloading the official Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security for Kubernetes datasheet. * Try the technology: Evaluate the platform in your own environment by registering for a 60-day self-service Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security for Kubernetes trial. Product trial Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform | Product trial. A consistent hybrid cloud foundation for building and scaling containerized applications.

Major banks embrace tokenised deposits as stablecoin alternative. Aug 21, 2026 at 2:10 pm Tokenised deposits may sound like just another fintech buzzword. But this week's cross-border settlement between two global banks suggests they're anything but. On 19 August, HSBC and Standard Chartered completed the first bank-to-bank settlement of a tokenised deposit using Swift's new blockchain-based ledger, according to PaymentExpert. The unique in its tech details transaction reveals two separate banks' digital money systems can talk to each other through a shared, neutral network - something the industry has been trying to prove works at scale before rolling it out more widely. So what actually happened? A tokenised deposit is simply a bank account balance with the same money already sitting in your account represented as a digital token that can move instantly, 24/7, instead of only during banking hours. HSBC's Tokenised Deposit Service and Standard Chartered's own tokenised deposit infrastructure connected through Swift's ledger, which acted as a go-between checking that both banks' systems agreed before the money was finally settled. It was also the first transaction of its kind to be issued, transferred and recorded on Swift's blockchain ledger, which only went live in July 2026. Why build this instead of just using a stablecoin? Tokenised deposits give banks the same speed and round-the-clock availability that stablecoins offer, but keep the money inside the existing regulated banking system, meaning clients still get deposit protections and interest. Lewis Sun, HSBC's Head of Digital Currencies, called the deal a landmark moment showing that digital money issued by banks can move between institutions without losing regulatory oversight. The scale of this pilot partners' tokenized deposit exchange is notable too. HSBC's service already runs in six markets, i.e. the UK, US, UAE, Singapore, Hong Kong and Luxembourg, while Standard Chartered's version is live in 55 markets worldwide. They're not only banks out there pursuing same goals with tokenized forms of money exchange. JPMorgan has its own JPM Coin and tokenized money market funds/RWAs, Citi runs the multi-currency Citi Token Service, and both Bank of America and Wells Fargo have expanded similar offerings. On the infrastructure side, seventeen banks from six continents are preparing to pilot transactions on Swift's ledger, a network that already moves the equivalent of world GDP every two to three days across more than 200 markets. Nina bobro. 2156 Posts Nina is passionate about financial technologies and environmental issues, reporting on the industry news and the most exciting projects that build their offerings around the intersection of fintech and sustainability.

Swift links HSBC and StanChart tokenized deposits. August 20, 2026 Crypto news general Positive Swift has successfully connected HSBC and Standard Chartered's tokenized deposit systems, using existing banking rails to complete final settlement in what represents a landmark step forward for institutional tokenized asset interoperability. This integration demonstrates that Swift's global messaging infrastructure can bridge competing tokenized deposit platforms from two of the world's largest banks without requiring entirely new settlement architecture. Investors and institutions following tokenized deposits news, Swift blockchain integration, and HSBC and Standard Chartered digital asset strategy should recognize this as a pivotal proof-of-concept that moves tokenized finance from pilot programs into live, multi-institution connectivity. The development carries immediate market context: as central banks and regulators worldwide accelerate frameworks for digital money, Swift's role as the connective tissue between tokenized systems could cement its relevance in a financial landscape increasingly defined by programmable assets and on-chain settlement. Unlike many blockchain-in-banking announcements that remain confined to closed networks, this integration leverages Swift's existing reach across 11,000-plus financial institutions, dramatically expanding the potential scale of tokenized deposit adoption. Watch whether additional global banks join the Swift tokenized deposit network in the months ahead, and whether this model influences how the Bank for International Settlements and central banks approach cross-border tokenized settlement standards. Swift connected HSBC and Standard Chartered's tokenized deposit systems, while existing banking rails completed the final settlement.