Banking on Trust: How Chemung Canal Trust Company Fortifies Security with Rapid7

Disparate Systems, Desperate Measures

Before partnering with Rapid7, Chemung Canal Trust faced a labyrinth of disconnected security tools and data. "We had a lot of disparate systems where we were getting log information from," Chris explains. "It was very difficult because we had different outputs coming from different systems, and that created a lot of delays in parsing that information and determining what was exactly the threat that we might be dealing with."

With a small team and mounting external threats, the bank needed a unified platform to streamline their security operations. The tipping point came when they realized the inefficiencies were hindering their ability to respond promptly to potential cyber attacks.

Banking on a Trusted Partnership

After an extensive evaluation, Chemung Canal Trust Company chose Rapid7 as their cybersecurity partner, beginning with InsightVM—a proactive vulnerability management solution that allows the team to identify, prioritize, and address vulnerabilities swiftly, while ensuring compliance. This initial investment laid a solid foundation for secure operations, but as their needs grew, the bank sought a partner that could help them operate even more efficiently. This led to adopting Rapid7’s Managed Detection and Response (MDR) for comprehensive 24/7 threat monitoring, threat hunting, and incident response.

For Chris, the benefits of MDR go beyond just round-the-clock monitoring. 

Before MDR, his team was often bogged down by alert fatigue, wading through a flood of notifications to determine what truly needed their attention. Now, with MDR’s constant oversight, embedded SIEM, and expert triage, the team is no longer in the weeds of alert management, freeing them up for strategic security work and proactive cybersecurity measures.

"Take patching, for example," Chris adds. "Before, we were in a reactive mode, dealing with patches as they came up and sometimes lagging on high-priority ones due to resource constraints. 

Additionally, Rapid7 MDR's ability to distinguish benign from malicious alerts has greatly reduced the team's response time. Previously, any suspicious activity would require hours, sometimes days, of investigation to rule out false positives. "The MDR team does a very good job letting us know when there are alerts we need to be concerned with, whether an alert is benign, and that saves us a tremendous amount of time throughout the week," Chris shares. "It's really shifted us from a reactive stance to a strategic, forward-looking approach."

With Rapid7’s MDR, Chris’s team gains valuable time back each week, allowing them to focus on broader initiatives like employee education, internal phishing campaigns, and compliance projects—all while knowing their environment is in control around the clock.

From Compliance to Confidence

Implementing Rapid7's solutions transformed the bank's security posture. "Our overall security posture has improved by using Rapid7 over the last several years," Chris notes. "We started at a place where we were compliant... but we were concerned from a credible perspective what would happen should we really be faced with a cyber event."

With Rapid7's integrated, intuitive platform, the bank now has comprehensive visibility into vulnerabilities and threats. "It helped us look at vulnerabilities in multiple different ways," Chris says. "With a small team, we were better able to prioritize what we patched and when."