Khaleeji Bank

How Khaleeji Bank Protects its Brand and Reputation in a Climate of Relentless Threats

Goal:

Safeguarding brand reputation, mitigating third-party risk, and accelerating growth in a high-risk environment.

Challenge:

Protecting trust and managing third-party risk in one of the world’s most targeted regions for financial cybercrime.

Solution:

Recorded Future’s unified platform, featuring:

1. Brand Intelligence
   • Brand impersonation detection (logo and domain abuse, including typosquats)
   • Executive impersonation monitoring
2. Third-Party Intelligence
   • Continuous third-party monitoring
   • Enhanced third-party assessments
3. Attack Surface Intelligence
   • Internet asset discovery and monitoring
   • Attack surface remediation and reduction
4. Threat Intelligence
   • Threat Hunting (Advanced Detection & Validation)
   • Advanced Threat Research and Reporting
   • Ransomware Mitigation

Outcomes:

• 99% faster vendor risk assessments
• 360° visibility into internal and regional threats
• Early, unbiased detection of third-party breaches
• Time savings from automated brand monitoring

The Middle East’s financial institutions are among the most targeted on the planet. Recorded Future empowers Khaleeji Bank to protect its brand and preserve trust in a region where reputation is paramount to success.

Challenge

A Business Under Constant Threat

For the Middle East’s financial institutions, trust is a valuable asset. A single security breach can inflict lasting damage on a brand’s credibility, eroding customer confidence, revenue, and growth. Financial institutions globally rank among the most targeted sectors by cyber threat actors due to their valuable data assets, critical infrastructure role, and the direct financial incentives they present to both cybercriminals and nation-state adversaries.

Khaleeji Bank, a respected commercial banking leader providing services in a region where reputation and trust are paramount, sits squarely in this high-risk environment. Threat actors regularly deploy sophisticated tactics like typosquatting, brand impersonation, and domain misuse to deceive customers. For this reason, brand protection isn’t just a marketing issue; it’s a frontline security priority.

The Vendor Visibility Gap

Another challenge involved an increasing reliance on third-party vendors as the bank scaled. However, new vendors weren’t always transparent about past breaches, and lax regional disclosure laws made it even harder to uncover hard truths. “As we onboard new third parties, we need to know who they are and what their risk level is. But many refuse to disclose breaches or exposure to protect their reputation,” explained Khaleeji Bank Information Security Manager Yusuf Hasan Husain. “We were in the dark, and without proper threat intelligence, expansion is very difficult.”

The team had limited tools to validate and assess third-party risk, and their toolset was inefficient.

“Running full assessments took so much time that the security team was always blamed when projects were delayed,” Husain said.

The business began to see security as a hindrance rather than a benefit.

Increasing Noise in an Expanding Threat Landscape

Khaleeji Bank’s rapid growth meant its risk surface was growing, but the security team was drowning in a sea of noise. With more than 20 different threat intelligence tools in play, the team was overwhelmed by irrelevant alerts and fragmented data.

“We were wasting a lot of time figuring out which alerts were related to us by region, industry, or entity. And in information security, every second matters,” Husain said.

Solution

A Single Platform Unites Threat Intelligence, Brand Protection, and Third-Party Risk

Khaleeji Bank determined the best place to start establishing a more proactive defense was to exchange their 20+ fragmented tools for one unified solution: Recorded Future.

Khaleeji Bank chose Recorded Future for its unrivaled protection and comprehensive benefits, including:

• Superior regional threat visibility
• Deep brand and APT monitoring
• Fast, actionable, and bias-free intelligence
• Tailored, region-specific alerts
• Vendor risk insights
• Strong support and onboarding

“Recorded Future stands out for its ability to deliver threat intelligence specific to the Middle East, and there’s no bias in what’s reported,” Husain explained. “It provides more than just intelligence. It backs up your entire security operations.”

Brand Protection in Real Time

Khaleeji Bank uses Brand Intelligence to actively monitor the open and dark web for brand misuse, typosquatting, and impersonation as part of their comprehensive digital risk protection strategy. With this module, the team can monitor activity for bad actors who target the brand and individuals.

Platform alerts help trigger domain takedowns and legal steps before attackers can mislead customers or damage trust.

Third-Party Risk Mitigation in Minutes

Using Third-Party Intelligence, security assessments that once took days now take minutes. The tool provides a critical time advantage for supply chain risk mitigation, enabling early detection of third-party breaches, even when vendors deny or don’t publicly disclose them.

“One regional CNI denied involvement in a breach, but Recorded Future uncovered that millions of records were leaked,” Husain said. “We took pre-emptive action, monitoring all inbound and outbound communications, preventing potential exposure downstream.”

Complete Visibility into the Attack Surface

Attack Surface Intelligence gives Khaleeji Bank a 360° real-time view into its digital footprint. The solution automatically flags newly exposed assets and configuration issues, including:

• Exposed domains
• Misconfigured applications
• Open ports
• Shadow assets

“It’s like seeing the bank from an attacker’s perspective,” Husain said. “With Recorded Future, we can remediate exposures before they turn into an entry point where they can breach our organization.”

Intelligence Tailored to their Threat Landscape

Since adopting Threat Intelligence, Husain’s team no longer faces a tsunami of irrelevant alerts. Recorded Future tailors alerts to their region, infrastructure, and risk profile, while AI-generated threat summaries highlight the most critical issues, especially around APT groups operating in the Middle East.

“Recorded Future AI is incredible. It helps us summarize a lot of events and threat reports in seconds, allowing us to make very efficient and correct decisions. All our intelligence is relatable to our business, fresh, and bias-free,” said Husain.

Results

Security as a Business Enabler

With Recorded Future, security at Khaleeji Bank isn’t an obstacle but an enabler of faster, safer growth in several significant ways:

• Vendor risk assessments are 99% faster, going from days to 10 minutes or less to complete. This speed empowers the business to deploy new services faster and scale with confidence.
• Brand protection is on autopilot. Khaleeji Bank detects and acts on threats long before they impact customers. What once required hours of manual investigation is now automated, freeing time and reducing operational overhead.
• They continuously monitor the security posture of third parties by leveraging unbiased, real-time intelligence. This activity helps the team avoid exposure, make informed partnership decisions, and act on breaches even when vendors are not forthcoming with information.
• Attack surface visibility has significantly improved, helping teams detect exposures, take corrective measures, and proactively stay ahead of threats.

A Comprehensive Security Perspective

Today, Khaleeji Bank has a dynamic view of its digital footprint, including a sweeping picture of regional threat intelligence specific to the Middle East.

“With Recorded Future, we stay in front of everything — political shifts, regional volatility, or targeted attacks — thanks to constant fine-tuning with their team,” Husain said.

Recorded Future has transformed how the bank approaches threat intelligence. Instead of just having data, they have actionable insights that power faster decision-making.

“Threat intelligence is the backbone of security, but with Recorded Future, it’s much more,” Husain said. “It is a powerful engine that supports your entire security operations and speeds up how we make decisions.”