Contrast Security, a company focused on next-gen code security, has announced Backbase, an engagement banking platform, has chosen the Contrast Code Security Platform in order to secure its software that offers banks with “the speed and flexibility needed to orchestrate seamless customer and employee experiences across any device.”
The announcement noted that the Contrast platform “allows Backbase to release software faster without the need of a big application security team.”
The update also mentioned that Backbase empowers over 150 financial institutions around the world “to accelerate their digital transformation.” From onboarding and origination to everyday banking and servicing, the company “helps financial institutions surpass their customers’ expectations at every touchpoint.”
But the financial sector continues to be “one of the most targeted industries when it comes to cyberattacks,” the update revealed.
According to Contrast’s 2021 State of Application Security in Financial Services Report, 98% of respondents “admit that they have experienced at least three successful application exploits in the past year that have caused an operational disruption and/or a data breach.”
Jeff Williams, CTO and co-founder of Contrast Security, stated:
“The big picture is that companies in the financial industry are as much of a software company as they are a finance company. Financials are also the largest consumer of open source software and application security is critical to the future of these businesses. As applications get more complex, more interconnected, and more critical – the risk goes up exponentially. So, financials, and companies like Backbase, are taking application security seriously.”
For organizations that experience over 10 application security-related breaches every year, the average breach “costs more than $1 million.”
Given Backbase is in the process of moving customers to its Backbase as a Service cloud offering in AWS and Azure, “security is a top priority,” the announcement noted.
The firm turned to the Contrast platform that “includes Contrast Protect and Assess to deliver measurable business results.” Contrast Protect protects the customers’ data “in Cloud environments without the hassle of managing and tuning different cloud web application firewalls (WAF).”
Backbase is also now able to “release software faster by leveraging Assess. Its customers will also use Assess to build custom integrations,” the update revealed.
Brian Vlootman, CISO at Backbase, remarked:
“Before Contrast, we were using different static application security testing (SAST), software composition analysis (SCA), and WAF solutions. We found ourselves overwhelmed with tool soup. Contrast consolidated everything into a single platform with accurate and fast results that we were not aware of before. The ability to offer interactive application security testing (IAST) and runtime application self-protection (RASP) in a single agent was a major selling point for us.”
Brian added:
“The platform features were more mature than their competition and made it easier to manage, integrate and consume results. We were also impressed with the seamless onboarding process. As an example, Contrast is protecting us against the recently disclosed Log4j vulnerability without having to patch or update our servers.”