Case Study: Fortune 100 Financial Services Company achieves major attack surface reduction with Palo Alto Networks' Cortex Xpanse

Fortune 100 Financial Services Company Reduces Attack Surface with Cortex Xpanse

A Fortune 100 financial services company with a complex, expanding network—driven by M&A activity, cloud development, and third‑party suppliers—struggled to identify and monitor all internet‑connected assets and therefore lacked a complete, accurate IT asset inventory needed to secure those assets.

The company adopted Cortex Xpanse as a central source of truth, using Expander and Behavior to automatically discover, monitor, and flag risky internet‑facing assets and communications. Xpanse uncovered a previously unknown public RDP server (connected to building controls), enabled remediation of more than 20 critical exposures (including 16 teleconferencing systems), led to replacement of hundreds of non‑compliant certificates, and reduced publicly accessible services from over 1,200 to 175—significantly shrinking the attack surface and improving its cybersecurity posture.