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User behaviour is the biggest security risk in expense management, says Callum Beckwith, Technical Lead at the expense management software firm Capture Expense.
Security in financial systems is usually framed as a technical problem and the conversation centres on infrastructure. How data is stored, how systems are encrypted, how access is controlled and monitored. That focus makes sense. Modern cloud platforms are built with security as a baseline as they are regularly tested, uploaded, and designed to meet stringent compliance requirements. However, in expense management, that framing only tells part of the story, as the most consistent source of risk is not found in the architecture of system, rather, it is how it is used.
Security doesnโt break at system level
Expense software occupies a unique position within the broader finance stack. Unlike traditional accounting platforms, which are typically limited to a small number of trained users, expense systems are accessed by the entire organisation. Anyone who incurs spend on behalf of the business becomes a user.
That shift matters as it fundamentally changes where security risk sits. The question is no longer how well the platform is protected in isolation, now, it becomes how reliably hundreds, sometimes thousands, of individual interactions align with secure practice.
In that environment, risk will not appear as a single point of failure. It emerges gradually, through behaviour that deviates slightly from what the system expects. A reused password here, a receipt uploaded over public Wi-Fi there. None of these actions are necessarily intended to compromise security and taken in isolation, they rarely do. But collectively, they introduce a level of exposure that no amount of infrastructure strengthening can fully mitigate against.
Where the risk actually concentrates
This is where organisations can misread the problem. Investment is directed toward strengthening the platform, while the conditions in which that platform is used remain largely unchanged. Security is treated as something that sits around the system, like a suit of armour, rather than something that is expressed through it in practice.
The reality is that expense processes do not happen in controlled environments. They take place on the road, between meetings, or at the end of a working day when attention is already stretched. They rely on quick inputs, small decisions, and moments of interaction that are easy to overlook. That context is what shapes outcomes as when the process depends on individuals remembering to follow best practice, consistency will always vary. This is not because people are careless, but because the system is asking them to prioritise accuracy and security in moments where neither feels like a pressing priority.
In that sense, security becomes a behavioural question before it becomes a technical one. Strengthening policy alone rarely changes that dynamic as they cannot determine how decisions are made in the moment. What matters more is whether the system makes it possible to stay compliant without slowing people down, whether secure behaviour feels like the easiest option, rather than an additional step to think through.
Rethinking where security really lives
What tends to make a difference is not additional layers of control or slick new software, but a change in where those controls sit. When security is embedded into the point of interaction, when the system guides behaviour as it happens, the reliance on memory and judgement begins to fall away. For example, when an expense is captured and submitted in real-time, within the tool someone is already using, rather than stored and submitted later. The process stays quick, but the risk introduced through delay and recall disappears alongside it.
If capturing an expense securely is the quickest and most straightforward way to complete the task, it will be done that way more often. If the process reduces ambiguity at the point of submission, the need for interpretation later disappears. The effect is subtle, but it changes how the system behaves over time. Security becomes less about enforcement and more focused towards alignment. The process moves from something that needs to be checked after the fact to something that is produced naturally by the way the process is designed.
This is where expense management differs from other areas of financial software. Control is not concentrated to a single function or team, it is distributed across the organisation, shaped by every interaction with the system. But, the strength of the system is only part of the equation. The other part, the larger and far less visible one, is whether the system makes it easy for people to do the right thing, consistently, without having to think about it.
Seen in that light, security weakness should not be viewed as a flaw in the technology. It is the gap between how the system is designed to be used, and how it is actually used in practice. While that gap is often acknowledged, the correlation between day-to-day interaction and overall security exposure is still easy to underestimate, particularly when that behaviour is repeated across an entire organisation. As the number of users increases, consistency inevitably varies, and small deviations begin to compound into meaningful risk. Closing that gap requires recognising that in expense management, security is not just built into system. It is created, or undermined, in the moment someone uses it.
