How a FinTech Startup Reduced Deployment Incidents by 90% with DevSecOps
A fast-growing payments startup was shipping 10 times a day — with zero automated security gates. Engitrix redesigned their entire CI/CD pipeline, embedded shift-left security, and delivered SOC 2 compliance in 8 weeks without slowing down a single deployment.
90%
Reduction in security incidents post-deploy
3x
Faster deployment cycles with automated gates
8wks
From kickoff to full SOC 2 compliance readiness
0
Hardcoded secrets remaining across all repos
Challenge, Solution & Result at a Glance
The Challenge
A FinTech startup shipping 10+ deployments per day had no automated security scanning, hardcoded secrets in 14 repositories, and an upcoming SOC 2 audit with no compliance evidence pipeline.
Our Solution
Engitrix embedded SAST, DAST, secrets detection, and IaC scanning directly into their GitHub Actions pipeline — with policy gates, Vault integration, and automated audit evidence collection.
The Result
90% fewer security incidents, 3× faster deployments (security checks added <90 seconds), SOC 2 Type I achieved, and zero hardcoded secrets across all repositories within 8 weeks.
A Fast-Moving Team with a Slow-Building Risk
<p>The client — a B2B payments platform serving over 400 enterprise clients — had built an impressive engineering culture. 12 developers shipping multiple times per day, a modern microservices architecture on AWS, and a Kubernetes cluster handling millions of transactions monthly.</p> <p>The client — a B2B payments platform serving over 400 enterprise clients — had built an impressive engineering culture. 12 developers shipping multiple times per day, a modern microservices architecture on AWS, and a Kubernetes cluster handling millions of transactions monthly.</p>
Root cause identified
Security had been treated as a release-time activity — a checkbox before going live, not a continuous part of the development process. With 10 daily deploys, this meant security was effectively being skipped entirely.
On top of the security gap, an upcoming SOC 2 Type I audit gave the team a hard deadline: they needed a demonstrable, automated compliance evidence pipeline within 10 weeks. Manual evidence collection was not an option at their deployment cadence.
Three Problems Compounding Each Other
The client — a B2B payments platform serving over 400 enterprise clients — had built an impressive engineering culture. 12 developers shipping multiple times per day, a modern microservices architecture on AWS, and a Kubernetes cluster handling millions of transactions monthly.
But their security posture hadn’t kept pace. In a post-incident review following a minor credential leak in staging, their CTO flagged three sysemic problems that had accumulated silently as the team scaled:
No shift-left security in CI/CD
Vulnerabilities were caught only in manual pen-test cycles run quarterly. By the time issues were found, affected code had been in production for months and remediation required significant rollback work.
Hardcoded secrets across 14 repositories
An internal audit revealed API keys, database credentials, and third-party tokens embedded directly in source code across 14 different repos — some dating back to the company's founding year.
IaC misconfigurations shipping to production
Terraform modules were not scanned before apply. Over a 6-month period, three S3 buckets had been inadvertently provisioned with public-read ACLs — none flagged until the audit.
A Four-Phase DevSecOps Implementation
Engitrix took a non-disruptive, sprint-based approach — making the existing GitHub Actions pipeline progressively more secure without blocking the team's deployment cadence during the transition.
Discovery, Audit & Baseline
Full pipeline audit, repository scanning for hardcoded secrets using Gitleaks and TruffleHog, IaC review with Checkov, threat modelling workshop with the engineering leads. Delivered a prioritised risk register within 5 business days.
Pipeline Security Integration
Embedded Snyk (SCA + SAST), Trivy (container scanning), Checkov (IaC), and Gitleaks (secrets) as non-blocking jobs in all 14 repositories. Defined policy thresholds — critical CVEs block merge; high severity creates tickets automatically in Jira.
Secrets Management & Vault Migration
Provisioned HashiCorp Vault on AWS with dynamic secrets for all database connections. Rotated all 47 compromised credentials. Implemented automated secret rotation with zero-downtime deployment using Vault Agent Injector on Kubernetes.
Compliance Evidence Pipeline & Handover
Built automated SOC 2 evidence collection exporting daily reports to an auditor-accessible S3 bucket. Delivered full runbooks, a security champion training session for 12 developers, and a post-implementation dashboard in Grafana.
Tools & Technologies Used
Measurable Outcomes After 8 Weeks
The improvements were tracked against baseline metrics captured during the Week 1 audit. All figures represent the 30-day post-implementation window compared to the 30-day pre-engagement baseline.
90%
Reduction in security incidents reaching production — down from 11 to 1 per month
3×
Faster deployment cycle time — security checks add <90 seconds to each build
SOC 2
Type I compliance achieved in the first post-engagement audit cycle
0
Hardcoded secrets remaining across all 14 repositories — verified by automated scan
Unexpected benefit
The automated Jira integration for vulnerability tickets reduced the security backlog review meeting from 90 minutes weekly to a 10-minute async standup — saving the team over 5 engineering-hours per week.
"We were shipping ten times a day and had no idea how exposed we were. Engitrix didn't just add security tooling — they changed how our entire team thinks about security. The SOC 2 audit that used to feel impossible now feels like something we can sustain indefinitely."
Arjun K.
CTO · FinTech Payments Platform (name withheld by request)What This Engagement Taught Us
Every DevSecOps engagement surfaces patterns we carry into the next. Three things stood out in this project that we now consider foundational to any CI/CD security transformation:
Speed and security are not trade-offs when tooling is right. The common fear — that security gates will slow deployments — is only true when tooling is misconfigured or threshold policies are too aggressive. Properly scoped, security checks consistently run in under 90 seconds.
Secrets are always the most urgent priority. In every engagement, secrets exposure is the single issue with the shortest time-to-exploit if discovered externally. Vault migration should always precede all other work in any pipeline security project.
Developer training creates compounding returns. The teams that receive security champion training generate 60% fewer new vulnerabilities in the 90 days post-engagement. Tooling without culture change is temporary. Culture change without tooling is ineffective.
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