Abstract This paper examines fundamental principles of continuous authentication (CA) and proposes a four-tier CA architecture to secure financial information systems. We define CA as a process that verifies the identity of an information systems user continuously for the entire duration of an authorized session. While organizations can, in theory, strengthen the security of their financial information systems through CA, several challenges need to be addressed in designing a CA architecture. A primary challenge involves the constantly changing user profiles in globally networked business environments. Profile content may include user knowledge and characteristics, access location, job characteristics, and transaction attributes. We propose swarm intelligence, which has the capacity to handle complex profile changes, as a technology for implementing CA in a dynamic, distributed network environment where user profiles are constantly changing. The paper explores model implementation challenges and discusses opportunities for future research.