Altros Teknologi - Integrated Multi-Vendor Partner IT Solutions

Case Study : Application Protection For Finance

Client: ABC Insurance
Industry: Banking and Finance
Problem: ABC Insurance had multiple customer-facing applications that processed sensitive financial information. They needed to ensure that their applications were secure and protected against potential cyber-attacks.
The financial industry has always been a lucrative target for cyber attackers due to the high value of financial assets and sensitive information stored within financial applications. In response to this threat, financial institutions are investing in application protection solutions to safeguard their applications and their customers’ information.
Business Needs: A financial institution needs to ensure the protection of their applications from external threats. With the rise in cyber attacks and data breaches, financial institutions are under constant pressure to maintain the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of their applications. Application protection solutions help address these challenges by providing advanced security features to protect against external and internal threats.
Industry Drivers: The financial industry is heavily regulated and has to comply with various regulations and standards. In addition, customer expectations around security and privacy are continuously increasing. Financial institutions are expected to have a robust security posture to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive information, such as customer data and financial transactions.
Business Outcome:
- Improved Security: Significantly improve their security posture and protect sensitive data from external and internal threats.
- Enhanced User Experience: Offer a seamless and secure user experience for their customers, increasing customer trust and loyalty.
- Compliance: Comply with various regulations and standards, reducing the risk of fines and reputational damage.
- Cost Savings: Help financial company save costs by reducing the risk of data breaches, which can be expensive to remediate.
- Competitive Advantage: Gain a competitive advantage by offering better security and user experience compared to their competitors.
Solutions:
- Web Application Firewall (WAF): The finance company implemented a WAF to filter out malicious traffic before it reaches their web applications. The WAF also helped prevent attacks such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS), which are common attack vectors for web applications.
- Runtime Application Self-Protection (RASP): The finance company also deployed a RASP solution that could detect and prevent attacks on applications at runtime. The RASP solution was integrated into their application code and provided an additional layer of protection against attacks.
- Code Obfuscation: To prevent reverse engineering and code tampering, the finance company used code obfuscation techniques to make their application code more difficult to understand and modify.
- Encryption: The finance company implemented encryption mechanisms to protect sensitive data such as customer data, financial transactions, and account information.
- Tokenization: To protect sensitive data in transit, the finance company implemented tokenization mechanisms that replaced sensitive data with randomly generated tokens.
- Vulnerability Scanning: The finance company conducted regular vulnerability scans of their applications and systems to identify potential vulnerabilities and address them before they could be exploited.
Results: The solution provided ABC Insurance with a robust and secure application infrastructure. The bank’s customers could access their accounts and perform financial transactions without worrying about their personal and financial information being compromised. The multi-layered approach to application security ensured that the bank’s applications were protected against both known and unknown threats. By implementing a comprehensive application protection solution, the finance company was able to significantly reduce their risk of cyber attacks and data breaches. The WAF and RASP solutions helped prevent attacks against their web applications, while the code obfuscation, encryption, and tokenization mechanisms protected sensitive data from theft and tampering. The vulnerability scanning program also helped the finance company identify and address vulnerabilities before they could be exploited, further reducing their risk of cyber attacks. In addition, the finance company was able to meet regulatory compliance requirements by implementing these security controls.
Conclusion: Application protection solutions offer several capabilities to protect financial institutions against external and internal threats. These solutions can provide several benefits, including improved security, enhanced user experience, compliance, cost savings, and competitive advantage. Financial institutions must work closely with IT security teams, application developers, compliance teams, and business executives to implement and manage application protection solutions effectively. By doing so, financial institutions can safeguard their applications and their customers’ information from cyber threats.