Lacework and Avenue Bank partner to build cutting edge cloud foundation for launch

Sydney Australia, 15 September 2022 – Lacework^®, the data-driven cloud security company, today announced it is partnering with Avenue Bank, a digital business bank focused on next-generation cash flow solutions for small and medium-sized enterprises in Australia, to help the innovative bank build its platform securely in the cloud from the start.

Officially launching in 2023, Avenue Bank aims to fill a key gap in the Australian banking market, with a mission to put money back in the hands of Australian businesses, helping them find new, flexible ways to free up cash. With the recent announcement that Heartland Group is looking to acquire Avenue Bank, the bank’s future is bright as it drives a broader strategy to become a fully authorised deposit-taking institution (ADI) in Australia.

With its core platform built on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Avenue Bank needed a security solution that was built for the cloud and could provide increased visibility into their cloud environment, help them meet compliance goals, and enable the company’s engineers to continue building innovative products, securely.

Avenue Bank’s Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Kevin Tham, has worked closely with Head of Engineering, Nic Parfait, to ensure they have the right security controls built into their environment, allowing the company to continuously innovate while always prioritising security and compliance.

“From an engineering point of view, our goal is to be secure from day one, by enabling the engineering team to shift left and ensure they are building securely and remediating findings as early as possible,” says Parfait.

Initially, Avenue Bank brought on a Lacework partner, Tracer Cloud, to help develop a security strategy, with the goal of gaining visibility into its environment and building up security guardrails. Through that partner, they learned about Lacework. Following a successful demonstration and proof of concept, Avenue Bank has now deployed Lacework for its Cloud Infrastructure security needs.

The selection was an easy choice. Avenue Bank seamlessly integrated Lacework into its environment and started receiving actionable alerts. The platform monitors anomalies and vulnerabilities in a central place and identifies what is relevant, increasing security capabilities without requiring users to be security experts – an invaluable tool for the company’s small engineering team.

“The anomaly detection and reporting pretty much sealed the deal for us,” says Tham. “With a lot of tools, you get a few thousand alerts, but on the operational level, it doesn’t really work because you’re getting flooded with information. This is the great thing about Lacework. Lacework doesn’t get rid of the humans. It allows the humans to focus on the most important parts. And then when you add the compliance capabilities, it’s amazing.”

Thus far, Lacework has allowed Avenue Bank to meet both its compliance goals and its security goals, with the business now fully prepared for SOC 2 and APRA compliance audits with customer security safety being a top priority. It has also used Lacework IaC Security to fix issues before deployment, cutting remediation time from one week to one hour thanks to the elimination of blind spots, while still receiving context-rich alerts. Without Lacework, Avenue Bank would face the additional challenge of adopting multiple tools and hiring more personnel to manage them. With insight from Lacework, the business has visibility to their cloud environment, enabling the engineering and security teams to work closely together. The nature of the technology platform at Avenue Bank makes it an appealing choice for future hires and gives Avenue Bank the ability to scale confidently.

Richard Davies, Director AN/Z at Lacework, says the Avenue Bank partnership is a perfect example of Lacework’s full power: “We are thrilled to work with Avenue Bank to give them complete control over their security function and put the company in an industry-leading position as it prepares to launch. Not only can we deploy quickly, but we also distill security down and empower teams of all sizes to focus on what matters to their customers and regulators. Lacework fosters and promotes agile practices like DevSecOps and maximises cloud, without adding complexity. We look forward to growing this partnership and watching the business and growing engineering teams benefit from the use of our tool.”

Media contact

Ellie Williams / Kara Palmer
BENCH PR
ellie@benchpr.com.au / Kara@benchpr.com.au

About Avenue Bank 

Avenue Bank is a digital business bank, built for small to medium Australian businesses of the 21st century. Our mission is to put money in the hands of businesses. We’re intent on recreating the entire experience of what it means to be a business bank. As we know, small businesses want banking solutions which meet their needs, which is why we’ve developed smarter, digitally-enabled products to free up cash, so Aussie businesses can do more with their money. Australian businesses are our sole focus and we’re determined to do things differently to help all our small business customers. Avenue Bank: Business banking done differently. To find out more visit www.avenuebank.com.au

About Lacework

Lacework is the data-driven security platform for the cloud. The Lacework Cloud Security Platform, powered by Polygraph, automates cloud security at scale so our customers can innovate with speed and safety. Only Lacework can collect, analyze, and accurately correlate data across an organization’s AWS, Azure, GCP, and Kubernetes environments, and narrow it down to the handful of security events that matter. Customers all over the globe depend on Lacework to drive revenue, bring products to market faster and safer and consolidate point security solutions into a single platform. Founded in 2015 and headquartered in San Jose, Calif., Lacework is backed by leading investors like Sutter Hill Ventures, Altimeter Capital, D1 Capital Partners, Tiger Global Management, Counterpoint Global (Morgan Stanley), Franklin Templeton, Durable Capital, General Catalyst, XN, Coatue, Dragoneer, Liberty Global Ventures, and Snowflake Ventures, among others. Get started at www.lacework.com.