Customer Story: Securing National Bank’s Last Line of Defense

Background

A leading national bank processes billions of dollars in transactions daily. While its cybersecurity posture was mature, its storage and backup systems had been excluded from regular security audits.

This gap was exposed when unusual activity was detected: backup files accessed during off-hours, encrypted data chunks missing, and metadata inconsistencies. The evidence suggested potential unauthorized access to sensitive backup infrastructure, raising concerns about ransomware or data tampering.

Incident Response

A crisis team responded within the hour and took the following actions:

• Identified a security misconfiguration as the entry point
• Traced the intruder’s activity across affected backup nodes
• Isolated compromised systems from the network
• Redirected backup operations to unaffected systems
• Rotated access credentials and administrative accounts
• Upgraded backup system firmware

While the immediate threat was mitigated, the incident highlighted critical blind spots in the security of the bank’s backup. The CISO prioritized immediate action to validate the security of these systems going forward.

Challenge

The bank was unable to monitor the security posture of its backup and storage infrastructure, leaving vulnerabilities and misconfigurations undetected across their on-premises and public cloud environments.

The bank required a straightforward, scalable method to detect risks – especially lateral movement into backup systems – and ensure alignment with their Cyber Security Framework.

Solution

The bank engaged Continuity to run a proof of concept of StorageGuard, a solution built to assess and secure enterprise storage and backup systems.

The proof of concept revealed:

• Outdated firmware on legacy backup servers
• Overly permissive access controls
• Unpatched vulnerabilities in storage appliances
• Legacy storage systems still connected to the network

Following the POC, the bank moved quickly to deploy StorageGuard.

Bank’s Storage, Backup, and Data Protection Environment NetApp ONTAP, Dell PowerMax, Dell PowerProtect DD, Veritas NetBackup, Brocade SAN switches
Pass / Fail	Risks by Categories
A total of 289 risk types were detected, consisting of 676 individual risks.

Implementation & Results

The bank:

• Selected Security Baselines and scheduled automated scans
• Integrated findings with ServiceNow for tracking and prioritization
• Used built-in remediation guidance to address critical issues

StorageGuard provided immediate visibility into misconfigurations and vulnerabilities. The bank was able to resolve long-standing risks and implement continuous security validation.

Sample list of the types of risks detected by StorageGuard:

“StorageGuard provided the clarity and actionable insights we needed to secure our most critical assets.” — VP Information Security

Benefits

With StorageGuard, the bank was able to:

• Easily prioritize and patch vulnerabilities and security misconfigurations
• Improve access controls to reduce unauthorized access risk
• Establish continuous compliance monitoring – aligned with NIST Cyber Security Framework and other industry standards
• Restore internal and regulatory confidence in the security of their backup environment