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Banking / BFSI

National Bank Infrastructure Security Assessment

One of the ten largest banks in the Middle East, rated 'A' by Standard and Poor's, brought in Payatu to assess a sprawling infrastructure spanning six buildings, thousands of employees and multiple regulatory standards. A 12-person team spent three months testing systems, networks, physical security and human resilience against war dialling, wardriving and phishing campaigns.

Infrastructure Security Assessment, Physical Security Assessment, Social Engineering Assessment, Security Awareness Training, Regulatory Compliance Assessment

At a glance

INDUSTRY

Banking / BFSI

CLIENT PROFILE

A National Bank among the top ten largest in the Middle East, operating since 1950 with 5,000+ employees

SERVICES

Infrastructure Security Assessment, Physical Security Assessment, Social Engineering Assessment, Security Awareness Training, Regulatory Compliance Assessment

ENGAGEMENT

12-person team, three months, six buildings

key Numbers

12

Security Professionals Deployed

3

Months Engagement Duration

6

Buildings Across the Bank's Locations Assessed, Averaging 7 Floors Each

Key Takeaways

Client – A National Bank among the top ten largest in the Middle East, listed on the National Exchange with an 'A' rank from Standard and Poor's, operating since 1950 with more than 5,000 employees and an international presence in the UK.

What Payatu did – Deployed a 12-person team across application, network, communications and audit for three months, conducting non-disruptive assessments and human-focused campaigns including war dialling, wardriving and phishing.

Outcome – Delivered an executive summary classifying critical findings into 10 categories, paired with remediation support and security awareness sessions to close the human-element gaps the campaigns surfaced.

the challenge

Why the client called us in

Being one of the biggest banks in the Middle East, the client's non-negotiable was quality, backed by regular assessments and audits across every premise: headquarters, branches and remote locations. Its infrastructure was as wide as it was complex, and it needed to meet FIPS, PCI-DSS 3, National Monetary Agency and its own proprietary standards, all without a single point of operational disruption given how critical every system was to national banking. The bank entrusted Payatu with the assessment.

Assess a huge, technologically diverse infrastructure without disrupting operations
Validate compliance against federal, industrial and proprietary security standards
Assess and educate the human element of the organization's security posture

scope of engagement

What was in scope

Computing devices, servers and endpoints
Network, communication and calling infrastructure
Physical and infrastructural security
Applications and business logic
Social media usage risk management
User and business data security
Human-element testing (war dialling, wardriving, phishing campaigns)

Our Approach

How Payatu ran the engagement

01

Scoping and Resource Allocation

Divided the engagement into segments and assigned the right mix of skills, experience and team size to each.

02

Understanding the System

Built a thorough understanding of the existing environment through system deployments and configurations, change-management processes, approval chains, operational documents and access controls, supplemented by interviews with system owners and review of proprietary standards.

03

The Assessments

Ran tool-based vulnerability assessments, manual client-side testing, custom scripts and emulators built for specific vulnerabilities, and validated configurations against industry standards and targeted compliance frameworks.

04

Reporting the Findings

Documented findings throughout the engagement with severity and criticality scores, technical reproduction steps and proof-of-concept scripts, delivering an executive summary with critical findings classified across 10 categories.

05

Remedial Recommendations and Closing

Provided a corrective course of action for every reported issue and supported the client's team directly with remediation, including issues disclosed by others.

Key findings

What we found

Infrastructure Scale

The bank's infrastructure spanned six buildings across multiple locations, averaging seven floors each at roughly 500,000 sq. ft. per floor, with wireless connectivity and computing devices assessed at every premise.

Critical Finding Categories

Critical findings spanned categories including sensitive information disclosure, insecure credential storage, source code disclosure, injection flaws, cross-site scripting, remote code execution, privilege escalation, default credentials, CSRF and vulnerable software versions.

Human Element Gaps

War dialling, wardriving and phishing campaigns surfaced gaps in staff security awareness, addressed afterward through targeted awareness sessions.

the outcome

Results and Impact

Payatu's three-month engagement gave the bank a full, evidence-backed view of its security posture across systems, networks, physical premises and people, without disrupting operations at a single one of its six buildings.

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