If your organisation is running Bank 365 or considering it, you are already on the right track to modernise your accounts payable operations. But as financial platforms handle increasingly sensitive payment data, the question of how you secure and monitor that environment becomes just as important as the solution itself.
In this blog post, we want to share some real-world experience helping a financial services customer deploy Bank 365 with enterprise-grade security using Microsoft Sentinel, and what that means for you.
What is Bank 365?
Bank 365 is a banking operations process accelerator built by Professional Advantage for Australian
businesses that extends Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. It automates the end-to-end payment process, from EFT processing and BPAY tracking to direct debit file generation and bank statement reconciliation, all within your existing Business Central environment.
The result is less time spent managing creditor payments, fewer manual errors, tighter control over vendor bank account details, and greater confidence in the accuracy of your bank balance. For finance teams under pressure to do more with less, it's a genuine game changer.
The Security Challenge: Banks Need Static IPs
Here's something that comes up consistently when implementing Bank 365 for customers in the financial services sector: banks require static IP addresses to whitelist traffic from the Bank 365 application. This is a non-negotiable requirement for most Australian banking institutions.
To meet this requirement, the solution typically involves deploying Azure Virtual Networks (VNets) and NAT Gateways to provide a stable, known outbound IP address. Depending on the customer's existing infrastructure, this may involve working directly with their internal IT team to find the best fit, but the outcome is the same: a clean, secure network architecture that satisfies the bank's whitelisting requirements.
Locking It Down: Security Best Practice in Practice
For customers in regulated industries, particularly those subject to financial audits, it is not enough to simply deploy the solution. You need to demonstrate that it's secure.
In a recent engagement, we worked to harden the Bank 365 environment end-to-end. Once the solution was configured and validated, we removed ongoing write access and placed the environment in a read-only state, with a formal change approval process requiring sign-off at the CFO level for any modifications. This dramatically reduces the attack surface and provides clear accountability for any changes made to the environment.
This kind of controlled access model is increasingly expected by auditors and risk teams, and it's straightforward to implement as part of your Bank 365 deployment.
Integrating Bank 365 Logs with Microsoft Sentinel
One of the most valuable enhancements we delivered was connecting Bank 365 logging into Sentinel, Microsoft's cloud-native SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) platform.
Specifically, we ingested two key log sources into Sentinel:
- Bank 365 Function App logs – capturing activity at the application layer.
- Business Central / Dataverse logs – capturing activity within the core ERP platform.
With both log streams flowing into Sentinel, the customer's security team gained the ability to create detection rules and alerts for suspicious behaviour; for example, flagging payment transactions occurring outside of normal business hours, or unusual patterns in file generation activity.
For organisations that already have a security provider or an existing Sentinel instance, this integration can be layered in without disrupting what is already in place.
Why This Matters for Bank 365 Customers
Financial platforms are high-value targets. Payment data, vendor bank details, and EFT files are exactly the kind of assets that threat actors look for. Combining Bank 365's built-in security features with the monitoring power of Microsoft Sentinel gives your organisation:
- Visibility. Know what's happening in your payment environment at all times.
- Auditability. Demonstrate compliance and control to auditors and regulators.
- Resilience. Detect and respond to anomalies before they become incidents.
- Governance. Enforce change management controls at the infrastructure level.
Whether you are implementing Bank 365 for the first time or looking to strengthen the security posture of an existing deployment, our team has hands-on experience delivering this end-to end, from Microsoft Azure networking through to Sentinel SIEM integration.
If you would like to explore what a secure Bank 365 deployment could look like for your organisation, get in touch with us today.
