Financial services organizations and institutions are no strangers to cyberattacks. Managing heaping piles of sensitive financial information and data can often turn heads (for the wrong reasons), offering lucrative opportunities for monetary gain through theft, fraud and ransomware. To make matters worse, cybersecurity trends are not currently on the companies’ side, either.
According to FS-ISAC, financial organizations saw a 64% increase in ransomware attacks in 2024 alone. While compliance regulations like PCI, SOC 2 and ISO27001 aim to enhance cybersecurity and build resilience, relying solely on that stamp of approval can only take you so far. Effective measures must be taken to safeguard systems and networks to protect organizations and their customers.
In the day and age of various solutions promising to improve cybersecurity posture and all the bells and whistles that come with them—to say nothing of the dizzying array of acronyms used to describe their functions—it’s important to remember what matters: Effective risk management, the discovery of the most critical vulnerabilities, real-time data that’s actionable and accelerated remediation timelines, to name a few. The right solution should have top-notch features that customers love, with evidence to prove it.
The solution? Enter Synack. Synack’s customers in the financial services industry use our Penetration Testing as a Service (PTaaS) platform to meet their compliance needs and, of course, help prevent cyberattacks and secure their sensitive data from prying eyes through point-in-time and continuous testing. Below are anonymous success stories from financial services customers that highlight where and why Synack stands out.
Reduced Remediation Timelines
“Before Synack, we tested once a year. One huge pentest led to one huge report which we sent to the various teams responsible for remediation. Reports came back that remediation work was done and we manually tracked this. However, when we tested next year, the vulnerabilities were still there and we’d been running at unknown risk. This is just not acceptable to the Bank. We now get patch verification, all managed through the platform to give us a real time view of successful and unsuccessful patch attempts. The analytics that Synack provided gave us an understanding of where remediation was failing and enabled us to focus efforts on those teams which have measurably reduced the number of failed patch attempts.”
Once exploitable vulnerabilities are identified, proper remediation needs to follow suit, which is why customers can request patch verification with the click of a button. We ask the same Synack Red Team member who identified the vulnerability to test the effectiveness of the patch. If they can get through, we, not the customer, will pay them again. To say they’re motivated is an understatement.
In our 2024 State of Vulnerabilities Report, Synack’s financial services customers saw a reduction in time to remediation for both critical and high vulnerabilities (there was a reduction across all severity types). They reduced remediation time of critical vulnerabilities by 80 days and high-severity vulns by 15 days. Hats off to our financial services customers!
Control At Your Fingertips
“During a major incident for the bank, affecting millions of customers, we could push ‘Pause Testing’ in the Synack portal. This immediately stopped testing so we have clean traffic to our websites and infrastructure which was invaluable to root-cause identification efforts. I don’t know of another provider that could provide this level of control. Synack’s traffic also originates from known sources that enable easy identification from what may be malicious and what is legit test traffic.”
With Synack PTaaS, you’re in the driver’s seat. We provide complete visibility and control over all security researchers and testing traffic. With the ability to identify attack traffic with a single source IP address, immediately pause testing with the click of a button and view researcher traffic audit trails for strategic reporting to spot trends, customers can ensure coverage and measure their attack surface resilience. Traditional pentesting vendors simply can’t compete.
Quality and Diversity of Testers
“The quality and diversity of Synack testers enables Synack to find vulns that many others have missed. It’s the only way we can safely, but closely emulate the real world threat. I can turn the tap on to a trickle, a full blast or turn it off according to the sensitivity of the application or the time of year.”
Customers can access exclusive talent they cannot typically find or hire with the Synack Red Team. We provide customers with the best hackers in the world, with each applicant undergoing a rigorous five-step vetting process with over six months of in-depth interviews for skill and trust. Interested in AI-specific vulnerability-hunting experience? Look no further. How about those with real-world experience with cross-site scripting and SQL injections? We’ve got you covered.
Real-time Visibility and Analytics
“With traditional testing, we never really knew how thoroughly an application had been tested. With the platform approach with Synack, we can see the amount of traffic and types of attempted attacks run against all the paths within the app.”
Say goodbye to pentesting in the dark. When you pentest with Synack, you can rest assured that our security researchers will hit your targets with everything they’ve got, with customers able to view data in real time. Through the client portal, customers can filter vulnerabilities based on severity and type and view real-time data into when and how often assets are tested.
Speed and Scale
“Our business is demanding! We’re in a highly competitive world where the rush to get products heaps huge pressure on and of course, we need to ensure we’re releasing secure products into production. Synack have been so flexible on test start dates and sometimes, have been able to launch testing within hours of our requests flying into them. This has massively helped change the culture of our security team working with the dev ops teams and now they actively come to us asking to be ‘Synacked’!”
Pentests shouldn’t have to wait. Delays can leave already vulnerable areas of your attack surface even more susceptible to malicious activity as you wait to queue a test. At Synack, we get urgency, which is why we can spin up a pentest in less than 24 hours.
Customers can also schedule tests themselves through self-service and, with our new AI Scoping Bot, take advantage of the benefits of AI to launch tests even faster and more efficiently than ever. With the click of a (you guessed it) button, customers use our bot to determine whether host assets are in a good state for testing, providing AI-powered insights and highlighting whether any open ports or firewalls could delay a test.
Synack Stands Ready To Secure Financial Services (And Beyond)
Synack’s financial services customers are not only keeping pace with today’s threats–they’re staying one step ahead. These success stories are part of a broader mission: We’re proud to partner with organizations across multiple industries–including healthcare, government retail and technology–to deliver point-in-time and continuous penetration testing at scale. No matter the sector, we help organizations stay resilient and improve their security posture.
If you’re interested in learning more about our PTaaS platform, request a demo.
