Teams should treat the new network as an extension of existing financial crime controls, not a standalone exception. That means risk scoring should be enabled at launch, monitoring rules should reflect the chain’s transaction patterns, and alerts should be triaged with the same governance as other supported networks. The goal is consistent visibility across wallets, flows, and counterparties.
Why This Matters for Security Teams
Adding a blockchain network to transaction monitoring is not just a coverage expansion, it is a control-design decision. Compliance teams need the new chain to inherit the same risk appetite, alert ownership, escalation paths, and evidence standards already used across other rails. If the network launches with weak scoring or informal exceptions, suspicious flow patterns can slip through during the period when controls are least mature.
That is why the governance model should align to the broader lifecycle approach in the NHI Lifecycle Management Guide and the control expectations in the NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0. The practical issue is not whether a chain is technically supported, but whether analysts can still explain, review, and defend monitoring decisions when transaction structures, wallet relationships, and fee mechanics differ from the other networks already in scope.
NHIMG research shows how often weak identity governance becomes visible only after harm has occurred: the 2024 ESG Report: Managing Non-Human Identities found that 72% of organisations have experienced or suspect a breach of non-human identities. In practice, many security teams discover monitoring gaps only after the first suspicious flow on the new network has already bypassed standard alerting.
How It Works in Practice
Effective coverage starts before go-live. Compliance, fraud, and security teams should map the new chain to the existing monitoring taxonomy, then decide which behaviours are normal for that network and which should trigger review. That usually means calibrating alerts for transaction velocity, counterparty concentration, wallet reuse, bridge activity, and patterns that suggest layering or rapid hop activity. The controls should not be copied blindly from another chain because network topology, finality, and typical transaction values can change what “suspicious” looks like.
Operationally, the workflow should include three layers:
- Risk scoring enabled at launch, with default thresholds tuned to the chain’s expected transaction profile.
- Scenario rules updated for network-specific patterns such as bridge transfers, mixer adjacency, or repeated small-value movements.
- Case handling and escalation aligned to existing governance, including analyst review, documentation, and escalation to financial crime or sanctions teams where required.
For evidence and auditability, teams can anchor the program to NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 Security and Privacy Controls and the risk-based expectations in Ultimate Guide to NHIs - Regulatory and Audit Perspectives. That keeps alert tuning, reviewer approval, and exception handling tied to a defensible control record rather than analyst memory or ad hoc judgement. Best practice is evolving, but current guidance suggests new network coverage should be treated as a controlled change, not a one-time configuration task. These controls tend to break down when the new chain has very different token standards or bridge-heavy activity because existing rules overfit older network behaviours.
Common Variations and Edge Cases
Tighter monitoring often increases false positives and analyst workload, requiring organisations to balance early detection against operational noise. That tradeoff becomes sharper on chains with low liquidity, sparse historical data, or niche transaction models, where baseline patterns are too thin to support precise thresholds. In those environments, teams should use conservative alerting at launch and then refine rules as evidence accumulates.
There is no universal standard for this yet, but current guidance suggests treating special cases explicitly. For example, a newly added network that is mainly used for treasury operations may justify different thresholds than a chain used for customer transfers. Similarly, if the network supports heavy bridge usage, analysts may need separate scenarios for bridge ingress and egress rather than one broad transfer rule. The Top 10 NHI Issues and FATF Recommendations - AML and KYC Framework reinforce the same principle: coverage is only useful when it produces explainable, reviewable decisions. Teams should also watch for vendor gaps where the monitoring stack supports the network technically but lacks mature typology coverage or case metadata for investigators. In practice, many teams get the first real signal from the new network only after a typology has already been exploited, not during the planned rollout window.
Standards & Framework Alignment
This section maps relevant standards and security frameworks to the operational risks and controls described in this guidance.
OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 address the attack surface, NIST CSF 2.0, NIST SP 800-63 and NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 set the technical controls, and NIS2 define the regulatory obligations.
| Framework | Control / Reference | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| NIST CSF 2.0 | GV.RM-01 | New network coverage is a risk decision that needs governance and ownership. |
| OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 | NHI-06 | Monitoring gaps often follow weak lifecycle and exception handling for identities. |
| NIST SP 800-63 | AAL2 | Alert access and analyst actions should use strong identity assurance. |
| NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 | AU-6 | Alert review and response depend on timely analysis of security events. |
| NIS2 | Article 21 | Operational resilience depends on controlled monitoring and incident handling processes. |
Track every network onboarding change as a governed identity-control update with reviewable exceptions.
Related resources from NHI Mgmt Group
- How should compliance teams monitor stablecoin payments on a new Layer 1 network without losing transaction context?
- How should compliance teams monitor transactions on a new tokenized assets chain as developer activity and transaction volume grow?
- How should compliance teams structure transaction monitoring training for mixed-experience AML and fraud staff?
- How should compliance teams monitor private blockchain activity across different privacy models?
Deepen Your Knowledge
Reviewed and updated by the NHIMG editorial team on August 28, 2026.
NHI Mgmt Group — the #1 independent authority on Non-Human Identity, IAM, and Agentic AI security. nhimg.org
