Transforming Application Security in Retail and E-Commerce: A Case Study
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Event-Driven Application
- Cybersecurity & Privacy - Application Security
Applicable Industries
- E-Commerce
- Retail
Applicable Functions
- Procurement
- Product Research & Development
Use Cases
- Retail Store Automation
- Tamper Detection
Services
- Cybersecurity Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
The customer is a large retail and e-commerce company with over 25,000 employees and $5 billion in revenue in the financial year 2015-16. The company's e-commerce platform is a leading sales channel, and it has transitioned to an agile development process to accelerate innovation. The company is responsible for protecting six major global brands with millions of customers. The company's Application Security team, led by Chris, was looking for a product that could automate application security like other agile tools, eliminate delays, and provide the visibility and context necessary to remediate vulnerabilities.
The Challenge
The case study revolves around a large retail and e-commerce company with over 25,000 employees and $5 billion in revenue in the financial year 2015-16. As the company's e-commerce platform became a leading sales channel, it transitioned to an agile development process, moving from 6-week release cycles to 3-week cycles to accelerate innovation. However, the rapid release cycles demanded an intense focus on security to avoid brand damage and customer data loss. The company's existing application security products were a disruption to the release cycle schedule, forcing all those involved in the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) to reprioritize their work. The Application Security manager found himself in the critical path for every production deployment, outnumbered in the entire process. The company's traditional application security was done at the integration testing phase, which was one step before the application was released to production. The process either added significant 'rework cost' or postponed security fixes to a later application release.
The Solution
The company discovered Contrast, an application security product that resonated with their vision of continuous application security in real-time. Contrast was easy to deploy and integrate into the existing SDLC chain, improving security processes. The Contrast agent could be turned on and off by a click of a button, providing visibility to anybody in the chain. Since making the switch to Contrast, the Application Security team was no longer the bottleneck. The team was able to keep pace with the other teams involved in the application development and release cycles, while being more effective overall. Applications now reported their vulnerabilities as they were tested, eliminating the separate application security scanning step during the release cycle. This helped the company become truly agile. Contrast Assess gave the team the ability to drill down to application-level detail and inform the engineering team exactly what vulnerabilities to fix, where to fix them and how to fix them – all in real-time.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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