Community Banks
Same threats as a national bank. A fraction of the security staff.
Community banks represent the vast majority of U.S. depository institutions and originate most of the nation's agricultural and small-business lending - yet they run lean IT groups already stretched across help desk, infrastructure, and compliance. The open-source supply chain rarely gets a dedicated set of eyes. Attackers know it.
The ERM Equation
Inherent risk - mitigating controls = residual risk.
This equation is codified in the safety and soundness standards your examiners enforce - 12 CFR Part 30 (OCC) and 12 CFR Part 364 (FDIC). Supervision is built to confirm that you quantify inherent exposures, deploy controls that genuinely mitigate them, and keep the residual risk inside a board-approved risk appetite. AI adoption and third-party technology reliance are now the vectors stress-testing that equation hardest.
Identify
Generate a comprehensive inventory of potential risks across business lines - including the open-source and vendor dependencies most banks have never seen listed.
Assess
Evaluate inherent vs. residual risk by analyzing impact and likelihood. Inherent risk minus control effectiveness equals the residual risk your board actually carries.
Respond
Avoid, mitigate, transfer, or accept - a documented decision for every material risk, not an informal best-effort posture.
Monitor
Continually verify control effectiveness. A static risk assessment is a red flag to examiners; a living one is evidence of a sound program.
Aligned with Examiner Expectations
Security work and exam readiness become one effort.
FFIEC guidance treats third-party and supply-chain risk as a core part of a sound security program. Open-source dependencies are third-party software, and examiners increasingly expect you to inventory them, track their vulnerabilities, and show a process for remediation.
Federal Reserve guidance for institutions under $50B (SR 16-11, SR 21-3) expects the board to set risk tolerance, senior management to own daily risk identification, and information systems to provide a consolidated view of risk. Our engagements are built to slot into that structure.
Software Bill of Materials
A current inventory of every direct and transitive open-source dependency in your environment - the foundation document examiners increasingly expect.
Documented triage process
A written method for deciding which vulnerabilities get remediation hours, based on reachability and real risk to the institution.
Remediation record ranked by risk
A defensible log showing findings addressed in priority order - the difference between an informal posture and a program you can show with confidence.
How We Work
A clear line around authorization protects you.
We analyze public open-source code and the components you authorize us to review. Any testing inside your environment runs under a signed statement of work with defined scope and rules of engagement. We do not touch your vendors' proprietary platforms without the vendor's written authorization, and every finding in an open-source project moves through coordinated disclosure.
This structure is deliberate: it keeps the work legal, keeps your systems safe during an engagement, and produces a clean record you can show to a board, an examiner, or a vendor.