How Mid-Sized Banks Can Turn Cybersecurity Into a Growth Enabler

Using Continuous Threat and Exposure Management (CTEM) to Protect Digital Transformation Without Slowing Innovation

Imagine launching a major update to your mobile app and watching customers start using it the same day—without a single security scare.

Picture your team:

• Adding real-time payments without worrying about unpatched gaps in the back-end.
• Offering instant digital account opening and knowing verification and data protection are airtight.
• Rolling out AI-driven fraud detection during the quarter instead of waiting for the next “security window.”
• Expanding self-service lending so customers can apply, get approved, and fund a loan in minutes—without introducing new vulnerabilities.

When security is part of every step of development, these moves aren’t risky—they’re just how business gets done.

Why mid-sized banks struggle to reach this point

Banks often want to innovate faster, but their security processes weren’t built for speed. Over the years, NopSec data has shown three patterns:

• Coverage drops as systems grow — In 2017, 56% of organizations scanned 75–100% of their assets regularly. By 2018, it had dropped to 31% (2017 & 2018 State of Vulnerability Risk Management Reports).
• Only a few vulnerabilities truly matter — Across historical datasets, about 2% of vulnerabilities made it into malware or exploit kits (NopSec Historical Aggregate, 2016–2020).
• Urgent fixes take too long — By late 2020, urgent vulnerabilities in financial services took an average of 176 days to remediate (NopSec 2020 State of Vulnerability Management Report).

Urgent Vulnerability MTTR (2019–2020) – showing the steady rise to 176 days in late 2020.

Fast forward to today—banks are facing more complexity. Cloud adoption, mobile-first services, AI tools, and IoT devices have created more attack paths than ever (NopSec State of Threat Exposure Report 2024).

What the latest data shows

A NopSec’s 2025 research highlights that the real challenge isn’t finding vulnerabilities— it’s knowing which ones matter most:

• Threat context and asset value can reduce remediation scope by up to 60% (NopSec Expert Q&A, Feb 2025).
• Organizations that integrate threat intel into prioritization address exploitable risks faster and maintain compliance without slowing down projects (NopSec Expert Q&A, Feb 2025).
• Security teams that shift from “risk discovery” to “risk reduction” free up resources for innovation (NopSec Outcomes Over Operations Case Study, 2025).

Remediation Scope Reduction with CTEM (2025) – showing the potential 60% workload reduction when prioritizing by threat context.

How banks can get there

Step 1 – Identify your crown jewels
Start by mapping systems tied to the project—payment APIs, authentication services, customer data stores.

Step 2 – Watch risk in real time
Continuous monitoring spots new vulnerabilities as soon as they appear, not weeks later.

Step 3 – Rank by real-world risk
Use exploit activity, asset importance, and business impact to decide what gets fixed first.

Step 4 – Adjust instantly
If a vulnerability on a critical system weaponizes, shorten the fix deadline immediately.

Step 5 – Learn from each launch
Post-release data should feed into control improvements, not just patch tickets.

CTEM: making this repeatable

CTEM ties all of this together. It’s not a single tool—it’s a process:

• It replaces point-in-time scans with ongoing, prioritized exposure views.
• It connects vulnerabilities to real-world threat intelligence.
• It makes compliance reporting a byproduct of daily work, not a separate project.

From the State of Threat Exposure Report 2024: “The most effective organizations reduce exploitable risk, not just scan volume.”

Real-world proof

At OneMain Financial, Managing Director of Security Operations Andrew King explains:

“It’s allowed us to look at things and understand them much quicker than we would have with previous tools. It allows us one common platform to ingest our data, view it with the teams, output the information, and then be able to prioritize across the most critical things that we need to patch.” (Customer Interview: OneMain Financial, 2022)

For a leading investment management firm with $205 billion in assets under management, the shift came when they built security into every stage of web app development:

• Security checks became part of development, not an afterthought.
• Developers, project managers, and security analysts worked from the same prioritized list.
• Fewer vulnerabilities reached production.

As their Director of IT Security put it:

“In a short period of time we’ve seen significant positive changes in how our internal teams collaborate on security. That is good return on investment for both us and our customers.” (Investment Firm Case Study)

The growth story security leaders can tell

With CTEM in place, banks can say:

“We launched on schedule, reduced exploitable risk by 60%, and have live data to prove it.” (NopSec Expert Q&A, Feb 2025)

That’s a message customers trust, regulators respect, and executives want to hear.

Bottom line: For mid-sized banks, secure innovation isn’t just possible—it’s a competitive advantage. CTEM makes it repeatable.

Want to see how leading financial institutions are measuring success by risk reduction, not scan counts?

Download our Outcomes Over Operations Whitepaper to learn how NopSec helps organizations shift from operations to outcomes—freeing teams to innovate while cutting exploitable risk.

Or Schedule a Demo to speak to our Team.