Custody Security

Overview

Custody security encompasses the controls that keep assets accessible only to authorized parties while preserving availability and accurate ownership records. It covers key generation, storage, signing, transaction approval, wallet architecture, access, reconciliation, and operational continuity.

Strong designs separate duties, distribute authority, protect keys with suitable hardware, limit hot-wallet exposure, verify destinations independently, and monitor every privileged action. Backups and recovery procedures require equal protection because they can recreate full signing authority.

Organizations should test controls under realistic failures, rotate compromised access, review permissions, audit records, and maintain incident plans. Security must align with legal segregation and customer entitlements so technically protected assets remain correctly attributable and returnable.

The wallet and custody workflow for Custody Security should locate where evidence enters, where a rule or judgment is applied, what state changes, and which downstream service relies on the result.

Custody Security is a security mechanism or control discipline that protects held assets through key management, segregation, approvals, monitoring, reconciliation, governance, physical controls, and tested recovery. Custody security must preserve both signing control and accurate client entitlement through layered technical, operational, governance, and recovery controls.

A production treatment of Custody Security should test protection of held assets through key management, segregation, approvals, monitoring, reconciliation, governance, physical controls, and tested recovery within the relevant asset, decision, or service state. The Custody Security context record for held assets through key management, segregation, and approvals should preserve source data, configuration or policy version, responsible actor, exception, and outcome. Review of Custody Security should determine whether safeguards addressing held assets through key management, segregation, and approvals changed exposure in practice, not merely whether a document or setting existed.