Global Financial Institution Scaled Vulnerability Management with Invicti

Industry: Fintech

Location: London

Product: Invicti Enterprise

Invicti’s web security scanner helps security teams save hundreds of hours

The Global Lead for Web and API Security at the financial services institution highlighted scalability as a fundamental requirement for the organization. According to the executive, not every security product can provide the necessary level of scalability, while Invicti’s ability to expand scanning capacity and support automation has delivered substantial value to the company’s security program.

Multinational financial services institutions (FSIs) operate in one of the most heavily regulated sectors, making application security a fundamental requirement rather than an optional safeguard. Thousands of web applications and APIs power both customer-facing and internal services. As a result, maintaining visibility into application risk across such a large environment is essential for regulatory compliance and for preserving customer trust.

Application security also has a direct connection to operational resilience and corporate reputation. Vulnerabilities that remain undetected during testing can lead to serious consequences, including regulatory findings and negative effects on customers. As development accelerated and its application estate continued to grow, one UK-based global FSI recognized the need for a scalable way to continuously discover and reduce vulnerabilities. Manual processes could no longer provide the required coverage.

The challenge: Scaling vulnerability management under regulatory pressure

Meeting stringent regulatory obligations while lowering real-world security risk is the primary objective of the FSI’s vulnerability management program. The organization operates a large-scale scanning program and performs approximately 35,000 scans each month. These include both on-demand and scheduled scans conducted throughout the software development life cycle (SDLC). At this scale, the limitations of manual review and conventional vulnerability management processes quickly became apparent.

The company’s head of web and API security explained that several years earlier, vulnerability management had depended on a manual process. As scanning activity expanded, assigning enough people to review every scan became impractical. Automation therefore became the only realistic way to increase security coverage.

Higher scanning volumes also made it increasingly difficult to maintain consistent quality. Some scans generated strong, reliable results, while others were influenced by environmental conditions, including low server response rates. Security resources were not sufficient to manually examine every finding. The FSI therefore required a platform capable of automating vulnerability management at scale without creating an unmanageable workload for security and development teams.

Implementing automated DAST-first scanning with Invicti Enterprise

The financial services institution selected Invicti Enterprise as the foundation for its automated web vulnerability and API security program. The organization had already relied on Netsparker technology for more than a decade. It subsequently expanded its use of Invicti to enable large-scale automation and tighter integration of security testing into the SDLC.

A self-service scanning model was introduced so that developers and application owners could initiate scans within their own environments using role-based access control. The organization also established an important policy: every deployed change automatically triggers a security scan. This model brought security testing to earlier stages of development, where resolving vulnerabilities generally requires less effort and expense.

The FSI’s AppSec lead explained that increasing the number of scans results in more vulnerabilities being identified and subsequently remediated, ultimately helping to improve customer security. The lead also noted that addressing vulnerabilities during penetration testing is considerably more expensive. Moving automated scanning as early as possible in the development process therefore provides a meaningful advantage.

To improve scalability and scanning performance further, the FSI established close cooperation with Invicti through a dedicated resident engineer. This collaboration helps address challenges associated with the institution’s bespoke environment, including server-side latency. At the same time, it provides a stronger foundation for sustainable growth in future scan volumes.

The result: Scalable automation without additional manual workload

With Invicti, the FSI has substantially expanded its scanning capacity across multiple environments. This growth has not required a proportional increase in manual review. As a result, the security team can devote more attention to program oversight and continuous improvement instead of spending its resources on repetitive triage.

The FSI’s AppSec lead explained that an opportunity became available to assign an Invicti specialist directly to the organization’s security program. According to the lead, the arrangement has been successful and helped establish a solid foundation for the processes the institution currently uses.

Invicti’s reliable scalability has allowed the organization to sustain extensive scanning coverage across thousands of applications. This includes pre-production environments and unauthenticated assets, while the FSI continues working toward broader authenticated scanning coverage. Given the size of the application estate and practical resource limitations, automation has become the only feasible approach for maintaining this level of security testing.

The business outcome: Lower risk and stronger customer protection

By integrating automated DAST into both the SDLC and day-to-day operational processes, the financial services institution is better positioned to detect and remediate exploitable vulnerabilities before applications reach production. Manual penetration testing and threat modeling continue to contribute to the security program. However, neither is used as the primary mechanism for discovering vulnerabilities.

The FSI’s AppSec lead stated that the organization’s objective is to reduce vulnerabilities so that customers remain protected and security issues do not lead to business disruption or reputational harm. The ability to increase scanning capacity and automate security testing was described as a significant source of value for the institution.

With Invicti Enterprise at the center of a DAST-first, automation-driven strategy, the FSI has established a vulnerability management program capable of addressing regulatory requirements while supporting large-scale software development. The program also enables security resources to remain focused on reducing meaningful risk across the organization’s entire application estate.