The security leader and his 50-plus-person security organization at a major US financial services organization manage a vast digital footprint across multiple regions, including North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. Supporting several thousand endpoints, the organization’s sophisticated security operations, including a specialized, dedicated SOC team, proactively defend against a relentless influx of evasive phishing attempts and malware.
To optimize their existing security investments and eliminate alert fatigue without sacrificing precision, the security leader integrated VMRay as a trustworthy verification layer for their automated security workflows.
Operating in the highly regulated financial services sector requires both robust defense and optimal operational efficiency. The security leader’s mature SOC faced a common dual challenge:
The team managed thousands of URL and file reports, consuming valuable analyst time for manual verification.
The security leader pursued a clear strategic goal: optimizing their security investments by streamlining their stack, aiming to utilize Microsoft Defender to its full potential for both Office and Endpoint defense, while divesting from another significant security investment.
However, moving exclusively to Microsoft Defender necessitated a highly accurate, noise-free solution for validating detections. Analyst fatigue was a real operational risk, and the team could not afford to block benign emails (and thus disrupt business) due to false positives, nor could they risk missing sophisticated threats that standard solutions might overlook.
The SOC needed a dependable, trustworthy “second look.”
“Our strategic goal was to fully utilize Microsoft Defender. We needed to ensure it was supported by trustworthy validation, and VMRay was the critical enabler that gave us that confidence.”
— Security Leader, Major US Financial Services Organization
The security leader and his team recognized that true automation and successful stack optimization depend entirely on high-fidelity data inputs. They integrated VMRay to serve as a high-accuracy analysis engine within their evolving security automation architecture.
Initially starting with manual submissions from the IR mailbox, the SOC transitioned to automated VMRay submissions via integrations, deeply embedding VMRay into their Microsoft Defender ecosystems:
By adding VMRay’s automated, high-precision analysis, they ensured Microsoft Defender was supported by a trustworthy validation layer. VMRay became an enabler for this critical strategic shift, providing the verification needed to confirm their optimized stack sufficed for their defensive needs.
For everyday triage, the SOC team heavily relies on the VMRay output surfaced directly in the Microsoft console. When further suspicious files or URLs are flagged, analysts leverage VMRay Threat Identifiers (VTIs) to understand the behavioral logic behind a suspicious verdict and extracted Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) to rapidly escalate a true threat.
In complex cases, analysts utilize VMRay’s console for interactive analysis, observing live behavior and using screenshots to create comprehensive reports and automate ticket enrichment via SOAR.
The most profound value VMRay brought to the security leader and his team was not only in catching threats that would potentially be missed but also in confirming the absence of danger.
Filtering False Positives. VMRay’s primary operational benefit for the SOC is the provision of definitive “benign” verdicts. Trusting VMRay highly, the team uses these high-fidelity inputs to filter out items falsely flagged as malicious or suspicious by existing security tools. This dramatically reduces alert overload and analyst fatigue, allowing them to close false alarms with total peace of mind and, avoiding unnecessary blocking of business communications.
Strategic Consolidation Enabled. VMRay helped the security leader and his organization to optimize their big security investments and proceed with their planned stack consolidation, maximizing the realized value and defensive sufficiency of their consolidated and optimized stack.
Productivity: The organization significantly accelerated alert triage and enabled much faster activation of SOAR playbooks. VMRay empowers the security leader’s mature team to confidently determine “who’s attacking us, and what are they trying to achieve.”
“VMRay significantly accelerates our triage and SOAR playbooks. My analysts can work faster and block with certainty, knowing they aren’t disrupting legitimate business communications.”
— Security Leader, Major US Financial Services Organization
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