Global Financial Services Institution Case Study

“Scalability is critical for us, and it’s not achievable with every product. The ability to scale up and automate with Invicti has been a significant value-add for our program.”
‍—Global Lead for Web and API Security, Global Financial Services Institution

Multi-national financial services institutions (FSIs) operate in a highly regulated industry where application security is a core requirement rather than an optional control. With thousands of web applications and APIs supporting customer-facing and internal services, maintaining visibility into application risk at scale is essential for both regulatory compliance and customer trust.

Application security is closely tied to business resilience and reputation. Vulnerabilities that slip through testing can have far-reaching consequences, from regulatory findings to customer impact. One UK-based global FSI found that as development velocity increased and application estates expanded, it needed a way to continuously identify and reduce vulnerabilities without relying on manual processes that could not scale.

The challenge: Scaling vulnerability management under regulatory pressure

The FSI’s primary driver for its vulnerability management program is meeting strict regulatory requirements while reducing real-world risk. The organization runs an extensive scanning operation, averaging around 35,000 scans per month, including on-demand and periodic scans across the software development life cycle (SDLC). This volume quickly exposed the limits of manual review and traditional approaches to vulnerability management.

“A few years ago, we used a manual approach to vulnerability management, but it quickly became impractical to employ so many people to review all the scans,” said the company’s head of web and API security. “The only way for us to expand coverage was to automate.”

As scan volumes increased, so did the challenge of maintaining consistency and quality. Some scans produced high-quality results, while others were affected by environmental issues such as low server response rates. With limited resources available to review every finding, the FSI needed a solution that could support large-scale automation without overwhelming security and development teams.

Implementing automated DAST-first scanning with Invicti Enterprise

The financial services institution adopted Invicti Enterprise as the foundation of its automated web vulnerability and API security program. Having used Netsparker technology for over a decade, the FSI’s team expanded its use of Invicti to support large-scale automation and deeper integration into the SDLC.

The organization implemented a self-service scanning model that allowed developers and application owners to launch scans in their own environments through role-based access control. A key policy was introduced: Whenever a change is deployed, a scan is automatically triggered. This approach enabled security testing earlier in the development process, where issues are less costly to fix.

“The more we scan, the more vulnerabilities we find, the more we fix, and the more we ensure our customers are secure,” the FSI’s AppSec lead said. “At the pentest level, fixing issues is very expensive, so moving scanning as early as possible makes a real difference.”

To further support scale and performance, the FSI worked closely with Invicti through a dedicated resident engineer. This partnership addresses the challenges specific to the FSI’s bespoke environment, including server-side latency, while building for sustainable growth in scan volume.

The result: Scalable automation without added manual overhead

The FSI has significantly increased its scanning capacity across environments while working with Invicti. This expansion was achieved without requiring a corresponding increase in manual review efforts, allowing the security team to focus on oversight and continuous improvement rather than triage.

“An opportunity arose to have an Invicti employee dedicated to our program, and it has worked out well,” the FSI’s AppSec lead said. “They put a good foundation in place for what we do now.”

Invicti’s ability to scale reliably has enabled the FSI to maintain broad coverage across thousands of applications, including pre-production environments and unauthenticated assets, while continuing to work toward more comprehensive authenticated scanning. Automation has become the only viable way to sustain this level of coverage under real-world constraints.

The business outcome: Reduced risk and stronger customer protection

By embedding automated DAST into its SDLC and operational workflows, the financial services firm can better identify and eliminate exploitable vulnerabilities before they reach production. While manual penetration testing and threat modeling still play a role, they are no longer relied on as primary discovery mechanisms.

“Our goal is to reduce vulnerabilities so customers are not compromised and there is no business impact or reputational damage,” the FSI’s AppSec lead said. “The ability to scale up and automate is a significant value-add for us.”

With Invicti Enterprise supporting a DAST-first, automation-led approach, the FSI has built a vulnerability management program that meets regulatory demands, supports development at scale, and focuses effort on reducing real risk across its application estate.