Neovera Boosts Bank Fraud Defense With Greenway Acquisition

Neovera purchased a North Carolina-based adversarial fraud testing vendor to simulate fraud scenarios in production environments using real, funded accounts.

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The Washington D.C.-area cybersecurity and cloud services provider said its acquisition of Charlotte-based Greenway Solutions will fuel Neovera’s ability to serve both large and small financial institutions, according to founder and CEO Scott Weinberg. Neovera will scale down and adapt Greenway’s enterprise services for regional banks and credit unions using automation and pricing strategies, he said.

“I look at the joining of the hips between what we see with CISOs and with fraud risk managers within the banking industry,” Weinberg told Information Security Media Group. “We see them really coming together, whereas I think in the past, separate divisions within the bank, or at least certainly separate teams. And we see them really coming together much more, especially in the last few years.”

Greenway Solutions was founded in 2005, employs 21 people, and hasn’t disclosed any outside funding. The company has been led since its inception by Jerry Tylman and Patrick Shaw, who worked with Weinberg at American Management Systems (now CGI) for several years in the 1990s. Shaw also spent a year as a vice president at Neovera in 2004 before establishing Greenway (see: Poor Security Practices Put Banks at Risk of Cyberthreats).

How Financial Institutions Benefit from Greenway’s Approach

The acquisition’s origin dates back several years when Greenway approached Neovera with a project related to adversarial fraud testing, he said. Neovera’s involvement in that initiative offered exposure to Greenway’s strengths and methodologies, which later evolved into merger discussions. The familiarity, along with the strategic overlap in cyber and fraud risk services, made the acquisition logical, he said.

“Little did I know five years later that we would start having conversations about, ‘Hey, maybe you guys should join the Neovera team,'” Weinberg said. “And so that’s what happened. So without knowing about them, I never would have found them.”

Unlike traditional penetration testing, which focuses on spotting network or application vulnerabilities, Greenway’s adversarial testing is designed to emulate actual fraud scenarios, Weinberg said. They operate using live, fully funded accounts in production environments, simulating real-world attacks by scammers. These simulations are meticulously crafted to exploit systemic and behavioral gaps, he said.

“The longer you have an established checking account with the bank, the longer that relationship exists, the more privileges you have with that bank, and so they can use that to their advantage to find other gaps in the bank’s processes and systems behind the scenes,” Weinberg said.

Greenway’s clientele includes top 100 global banks, whereas Neovera has a strong footprint in the community and regional banking sectors, Weinberg said. He sees an opportunity to tailor Greenway’s high-end fraud testing for smaller institutions – who often lack sophisticated fraud detection systems – and to introduce Neovera’s security and consulting services to Greenway’s large bank clients.

“That is a huge positive for the fraud team, because they need to have bankers on their staff as well, as well as the fraud team, Weinberg said.

Why CISOs, Fraud Risk Managers Are Coming Together

Weinberg said Neovera plans to simplify Greenway’s service offerings, reduce the number of monthly tests and invest in automation to make delivery more cost-effective and scalable. Account takeovers, unauthorized wire transfers, and KYC bypass tactics were cited as top concerns by smaller banks, and Weinberg said Neovera will tailor Greenway’s test to focus on these vulnerabilities to maximize impact.

“There’s a broad range of services that are offered to the much larger super regional, international banking community, and some of those services will likely not apply to the smaller banks,” Weinberg said. “So, it’s really trimming down the service offering and perhaps skimming down the number of tests that we do on a monthly basis.”

CISOs and fraud risk managers historically operated in silos, but Weinberg said rising fraud threats are forcing tighter integration since cybercriminals often exploit systemic vulnerabilities to commit fraud. Weinberg said internal banking divisions must either coordinate efforts or outsource to specialists like Greenway for functions they cannot execute internally such as testing in live environments.

“One is trying to make sure that nobody can break into any of the systems, and then the other one is trying to make sure that nobody steal money,” Weinberg said. “It’s like, ‘Well, sometimes the way I steal money is to break into your system. So, why don’t you guys just work together?'”

Going forward, Weinberg said Neovera plans to pursue acquisitions related to cloud security and business tech advisory services to broaden the company’s capabilities in emerging risk areas, while helping clients plan and manage their cybersecurity strategies more effectively. Business advisory services are seen as a bridge between strategy formulation and implementation, and he said Neovera can help with delivery.

“We’re always looking for very strategic opportunities because you never know what’s out there,” Weinberg said. “We didn’t know Greenway was going to be available as an acquisition until it came across our desk, and I happened to know the two principals.”