Case Study: a major financial institution stops a data theft breach with Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 Incident Response

a major financial institution stops millions in data theft with Palo Alto Networks Unit 42

A major financial institution faced a critical data breach involving the theft of sensitive customer loan application data and a threat of public exposure. Suspecting an insider threat, they engaged Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 Incident Response to identify the source, determine if an external actor was involved, and contain the threat without disrupting business.

Palo Alto Networks' team deployed Cortex XDR for endpoint visibility and, through investigative work including source code review, identified an insecure direct object reference (IDOR) vulnerability in the client's web application as the source. After evicting the threat actor, Unit 42 validated the fix and provided security recommendations. The solution resolved the immediate data leak and helped the institution secure its environment against future vulnerabilities.