Banking Leader Transitions from Alert Overload to Risk-Based Prioritization

A major U.S. bank, one of the largest multinational financial services companies in the world, faced a common but critical challenge. With operations in 35 countries, serving over 70 million customers globally, this financial giant handles more than just large volumes of transactions—they manage over 5,000 internal applications that ensure their banking services run smoothly. As a leading mortgage originator and one of the top banks in the U.S., their success relies on maintaining a seamless and secure digital infrastructure.

Despite having a robust security team in place, the bank struggled with an overload of redundant alerts coming from multiple security tools. These alerts lacked the business context needed to effectively prioritize them, resulting in confusion, wasted resources, and slow responses. Silos between the security, DevOps, and IT teams made communication difficult. The constant flood of notifications created redundant tickets and miscommunication about which vulnerabilities truly needed attention. As a result, the bank was facing inefficiencies that put their security at risk, delaying remediation efforts and increasing operational costs.

With the ever-evolving nature of cybersecurity threats and the pressure to ensure the highest level of customer trust, the bank sought a solution that could streamline their operations and provide clear visibility into their security risks. Their goal was simple: reduce redundant noise, improve team communication, and establish clear priorities for remediation.

The main challenge was the sheer volume of alerts that the security team was receiving. With so many different security tools in play—ranging from static application security testing (SAST), dynamic application security testing (DAST), infrastructure as code (IaC), and container security—each team was receiving a flood of tickets without clear context for prioritization. The bank’s DevOps team wasn’t able to easily distinguish which vulnerabilities posed the most immediate risk, leading to a slower response rate.

These alerts and tickets lacked business context, making it difficult to effectively prioritize them. Security issues weren’t being evaluated based on the risk they posed to the bank’s most critical applications or services, which meant that the most dangerous vulnerabilities were sometimes buried under less relevant ones. Additionally, the bank had tried other solutions that didn’t scale well with their large and complex operation. They needed a solution that could handle the size and complexity of their systems while also helping them implement effective service-level agreements (SLAs).

The bank found its solution in the AppSOC Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) platform. AppSOC was deployed at scale to consolidate the findings from all of the bank’s scanners across different teams. This allowed the security team to establish a clear business context taxonomy, helping them categorize and prioritize vulnerabilities based on factors that truly mattered, such as exploitability, business impact, and the importance of the affected applications.

AppSOC normalized the scores from all the different security tools, creating a consistent and clear picture across the board. Not only did it consolidate findings and remove redundant alerts, but it also provided automated workflows that synced seamlessly with Jira and ServiceNow, which the bank used for ticketing and vulnerability response. By integrating these workflows, AppSOC made it easier for the DevOps and security teams to collaborate on remediating vulnerabilities in a timely and efficient manner.

One of the most powerful aspects of the AppSOC platform was its ability to provide visibility across the entire organization, bridging the gap between the development, cloud, and operations teams. This visibility was essential for improving prioritization and ensuring that the most critical vulnerabilities were being addressed first. The platform allowed the bank to prioritize based on the severity, exploitability, and business criticality of each issue.

The bank ultimately chose AppSOC because it offered a unique combination of scalability, risk-based prioritization, and enterprise-grade capabilities. Unlike other solutions that the bank had tested, AppSOC was able to scale to meet the needs of their large, multinational operation. The platform also provided a level of consistency and visibility that was previously missing, allowing the bank to prioritize vulnerabilities based not just on their severity, but on their potential impact to the business.

Risk-based prioritization was one of the key features that set AppSOC apart. The bank needed a tool that could help them focus on the vulnerabilities that mattered most—those that had the highest potential to be exploited and cause significant damage to critical applications. AppSOC provided that clarity by including business context in its risk assessments, which allowed the security and DevOps teams to align their efforts with the company’s overall business objectives.

Furthermore, AppSOC helped the bank codify SLAs using its built-in tools, ensuring that the security and DevOps teams were able to respond to vulnerabilities in a timely manner. This was crucial for meeting compliance requirements and maintaining customer trust. The platform’s enterprise-grade scalability was another key advantage, as the bank’s previous solutions had struggled to keep up with their size and complexity.

The impact of implementing AppSOC was immediate and significant. The bank saw a 75% reduction in the number of tickets created, which in turn drastically improved their response times. By consolidating and deduplicating security alerts, AppSOC reduced the noise and allowed the security team to focus on the vulnerabilities that actually mattered. This not only improved their efficiency but also helped them meet their SLAs more consistently, which was critical for maintaining compliance and avoiding fines or penalties.