[AppSec Case Study] Improving Development Efficiencies & Tightens Up Open Source Security [Video]

FINRA, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, is charged with ensuring fair financial markets for American investors. The nongovernmental regulator’s mission is to safeguard the investing public against fraud and bad practices, and it pursues this mission by writing and enforcing regulations for all U.S. brokers and brokerage firms.

Every day, the regulator processes approximately 6 terabytes of data and information on a staggering 20 billion financial transactions to build a holistic picture of U.S. market trading. At any given time, FINRA’s 500 software developers have between 100 and 130 apps under management—which translates to 100,000 builds, Kostas Gaitanos, senior director of development services at FINRA, explains.

Given these realities, it’s no surprise that managing developers’ use of open source code—and controlling the security implications of its use—has become more and more challenging for FINRA.

Homegrown solution increases administrative burdens

But as time went on, managing the homegrown workflow became almost a full-time job for FINRA …