Protecting sensitive data from cyber threats requires proactive security measures. VAPT (Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing) has emerged as one such security assessment method that can effectively fulfil this purpose. By preventing data breaches, VAPT simultaneously strengthens your security posture. It serves as an appropriate security testing methodology to strengthen your security posture by preventing data breaches. What involves is a comprehensive security testing process that mimics real-world cyber attacks by combining vulnerability assessment and penetration testing to help businesses identify and fix security flaws in their IT infrastructure, thus allowing them to stay ahead of cyber threats.

In this case study, we share how VAPT helped a leading financial company prevent cyber theft. We’ll get down to the methods we adopted and how these helped us deliver security and compliance solutions for our client, not to exclude how the latter could maximise their ROI.

How We Prevented a Major Data Breach for our Fintech Client

A UAE-based leading fintech company was in search of a reliable cybersecurity partner to secure its online services and apps from rising cyber threats. 

With 2,000 employees, including both banking and non-banking staff, securing sensitive financial data was a top priority.

Shifting their operations to digital banking was no less of a risk from emerging cyber threats. Protecting highly sensitive financial data became critical to maintaining security, compliance, and business continuity.

To stay ahead of threats, the company needed an approach, which is reliable and also scales with their operations.

Selecting The Right Cybersecurity Service Provider

With the rise of ransomware and malware attacks, financial institutions can’t afford to take cybersecurity lightly. Hiring trusted security experts is no longer an option, but essential. That’s how they connected with Wattlecorp.

For the Wattlecorp’s cybersecurity professionals, the first step was to assess the company’s security posture. This was also followed by adopting a systematic approach to identifying, solving, and evaluating the results.

The Problem

The client needed an elaborate analysis of their cybersecurity posture. They also wanted to determine if their system and application were compatible with industry-specific regulatory compliance, specifically FMI (Financial Market Infrastructure), AML (Anti-Money Laundering), Counter-Terrorism Financing) etc.

Being a digital financial company, this client required an extensive security analysis across multiple areas.

• Mobile and Web Applications
• Internal network
• External IPs
• WiFi

Understanding the client’s requirements, the Wattlecorp cybersecurity team first defined the project scope. This helped determine the right security assessments for each area.

Upon splitting the testing process, the outlay appeared as below:

• Mobile Applications – Greybox VAPT
• Web Applications – Blackbox VAPT
• Internal Workstations – (Vulnerability Assessment)
• External IPs – VAPT
• WiFi – Penetration Testing

It also became evident that a VAPT-enabled cybersecurity analysis would be the best approach to check for security weaknesses in the aforementioned components. Mitigating the same would also involve profound penetration testing to gauge the risks and their impact.

VAPT Methodology Utilised (Stage 1)

A VAPT methodological framework was adopted, which involved the following processes:

Analysing The Business Framework

Understanding our client’s core business objectives and operations enabled us to determine how we should proceed with our VAPT assessment.

We, however, needed to get familiar with the technologies and tools they utilised to check whether these aligned with ours or not.

SAST And DAST For Mobile and Web Applications

Required conducting a SAST (Static Application Security Testing) combined with DAST (Dynamic Application Security Testing) assessment of our client’s mobile and web applications. 

This revealed security gaps with potentials for unauthorized access and significant exploitation.

Threat Modeling

Adopted a Threat Modeling approach enabled us to identify and assess the depth of security risks, and mitigate the same. Doing so subsequently required creating relevant attack scenarios.

Exploitation and Reporting (Stage 2)

We started with an extensive detection and mitigation of potential vulnerabilities into the systems, applications, and networks of our client as part of our vulnerability assessment and penetration testing..

Driven by this objective and to help facilitate their specific operational and functional requirements, our comprehensive exploitation and reporting tasks included the following procedures:

Simulating Cyber Attacks

We needed to conduct a Black Box penetration testing. Such an assessment was made to target the internal workstations, the mobile and web applications, external IPs, and Wi-Fi. This technique helped detect security flaws that lay inherent to systems with external interfaces (external IPs, Wi-Fi, etc.).

The white box pen testing followed, revealing significant threats within the source code of the system and concerned mobile and web applications. Through this, we could identify those vulnerabilities within the targeted systems and applications that could have led to massive actual-world attacks if left undetected.

Reporting

A detailed documentation was prepared on the noted security flaws. This also included pointing out the associated threats with clear-cut recommendations to undertake appropriate mitigation. Fortifying the security posture for our client’s business was the ultimate goal in this undertaking.

Mitigation

Having identified the potential security flows through the black and white box penetration testing approaches, we helped implement the necessary remediation measures to address detected vulnerabilities. The systems, applications, and network of this FinTech enterprise required a targeted approach to solving critical security issues found within them. The objective was to derive continuous improvement of essential security parameters by undertaking regular VAPT assessments. This also mandated employing the necessary tools that would help automate the process.

Tools Utilised:

We utilised tools, such as BurpSuite Pro, OWASP ZAP, and Nmap to help us identify security vulnerabilities in the concerned critical aspects of our client’s business operations. We used these to tailor our VAPT assessment to meet the specific security needs of the systems, networks and applications.

Results and Recommendations

Results

• Instances of incorrect error handling with unsafe data storage were seen in web applications.
• Cross-site scripting (XSS) and SQL injections found within the web applications.
• Identified obsolete protocols within the Internet-facing services through external IP assessment.

Recommendations

• Suggested methods for remediation measures for all detected vulnerabilities in web applications, mobile applications, and external IP.
• Advised to regularly update and fix potential vulnerabilities
• Enforced strict data encryption, especially for financial transactions.
• Implemented a continuous monitoring system to monitor and detect threats.
• Provided awareness and training sessions on secure coding practices, also enforcing security as a shared response.

Final Outcomes

A detail-oriented VAPT assessment we undertook for our client helped deliver the following outcomes:

• Improved Security Controls: Significant improvements in the client’s security posture through detection and fixation of known vulnerabilities. These also resulted in ensuring sound protection of their digital assets.
• Enhanced client collaboration: Having our pentesters working along with the client’s IT personnel led to a well-organized cross-functional team to implement our proposed vulnerability fixation suggestions.
• Risk Assessment and Mitigation: After successful completion of our VAPT followed by documentation of noted security flaws, with appropriate recommendations provided for mitigation, we went on to further assist the DevOps team with the concerned procedure. This was successfully resolved, confirming the same through a final round of retest. We had our project management’s support and guidance from the start to the end, who helped ensure that no critical parts were missed throughout the process, with optimal resource utilization and within budget.
• Improved VAPT ROI: We further went on to advise investing in regular VAPTs to improve ROI.

Conclusion

This was one of the many instances where we helped businesses secure their systems, applications, and networks by undertaking VAPT assessments.

A notable outcome was our successfully conveying the significance of undertaking regular vulnerability assessments and penetration testing to identify threats early on in the software development lifecycle, thus stopping cyberattacks in their way.

Our clients’ VAPT Success Stories do not end here! Please do visit our Services webpage for the businesses we’ve served. You will also realise how utilising VAPT in all its meaning and worth will help you prevent financial disasters, reputational damage, and legal repercussions in the long run.

Not only this, undertaking regular VAPT assessments will also help you ensure regulatory compliance and retain operational stability for your organisation.

Ready to invest in VAPT Services for Enhanced Security Posture? Reach out to us and we’ll be more than happy to support and guide you in the processes involved. Book a Free VAPT Consultation and allow us to help you remain disaster-proof, also enhance your VAPT ROI.