NFE Capability Pillars | Testhouse
$4.88M
average global cost of a data breach in 2024 — largest year-on-year increase since the pandemic
IBM Cost of Data Breach Report 2024
292
days average time to identify and contain a breach involving stolen credentials
IBM Cost of Data Breach Report 2024
63%
of organisations deploy code without fully testing for security vulnerabilities
Veracode State of Software Security 2024
€290M
GDPR fine issued to Uber in 2024 for inadequate data safeguards
GDPR Enforcement Tracker 2024

Security is a business imperative, not an IT task.

The global average cost of a data breach reached $4.88M in 2024 — a 10% jump in a single year. For healthcare and financial services, average breach costs exceed $9M and $6M respectively. But the financial cost is only part of the story: 70% of breached organisations report significant operational disruption, and customer PII was compromised in nearly half of all breaches. Our Security & DevSecOps pillar moves security from a final-stage gate to a continuous engineering discipline — embedding vulnerability detection, compliance validation, and threat modelling into every layer of your delivery pipeline.


What's at Risk Without It
$4.88M
$4.88M average breach cost globally in 2024 — largest year-on-year increase since the pandemic (IBM 2024)
292
Breaches involving stolen credentials take on average 292 days to identify and contain — nearly 10 months of undetected exposure
€290M
GDPR fines of up to 4% of annual global revenue — Uber received a €290M GDPR fine in 2024 for inadequate data safeguards
63%
63% of organisations deploy code without fully testing for security — creating a continuous production vulnerability backlog
What We Deliver

SAST & DAST
in CI/CD

Static and Dynamic Application Security Testing integrated directly into your build pipeline. Vulnerabilities are caught at commit, not after deployment — eliminating the cost escalation of late-stage security fixes.

Vulnerability Assessment & Penetration Testing (VAPT)

Comprehensive VAPT across your application layer, APIs, infrastructure, and cloud configuration. We think like attackers — identifying exploitable vulnerabilities before they are exploited in production.

Infrastructure Security
Review

Cloud configuration review, network segmentation audit, IAM policy analysis, and Kubernetes/container security assessment. Misconfigured infrastructure is a leading breach vector — we eliminate it systematically.

Code Review & Security
Audit

Expert-led security code review targeting OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities, authentication logic, cryptographic implementation, and injection risks. We review what automated scanners miss.

Business Outcomes We Deliver
80%
Reduction in critical vulnerabilities pre-release

SAST/DAST in CI/CD pipelines catches critical and high vulnerabilities at code commit — eliminating the exponential cost of post-release remediation.

£0
Regulatory fines and enforcement actions

Evidenced compliance testing and documented security posture satisfies regulatory audit requirements across GDPR, PCI-DSS, FCA, and PRA frameworks.

$2.2M
Average breach cost reduction with AI-powered prevention

Organisations using security AI and automation in prevention workflows save an average of $2.2M per breach compared to those who don't (IBM 2024).

100×
Cheaper to fix at design than in production

Our shift-left security model catches issues when the cost to fix is a fraction of what it becomes when discovered in a production breach or pen test.

Client Outcome — Insurance

National Insurer Achieves 99.99% Availability and Eliminates Regulatory Risk

Unplanned outages during claims processing peaks were creating regulatory scrutiny and damaging customer trust. Our resilience team introduced structured chaos engineering — running GameDays that revealed 12 previously unknown single points of failure across the claims platform. DR runbooks were rewritten and automated, cutting recovery time from 4 hours to 22 minutes.

Read the full case study
NFE Maturity Model — Where Does Your Organisation Sit?
Maturity Level Performance Reliability Security Observability Business Risk
Level 1 — Reactive Ad-hoc testing before release No DR testing Annual pen test only Siloed server monitoring High — incidents discovered by customers
Level 2 — Defined Load tests in staging DR plan exists, untested SAST in pipeline APM on key apps Moderate — issues caught late, costly to fix
Level 3 — Proactive Perf gates in CI/CD Chaos experiments quarterly SAST + DAST in pipeline Full-stack observability Low — issues caught early, rapidly resolved
Level 4 — Continuous Real-time CX + capacity AI Continuous chaos + SLO error budgets Security as code, always-on VAPT AI-powered anomaly prediction Minimal — revenue-protective, regulation-ready

Common Questions About Security & DevSecOps

Answers to the questions we hear most often from engineering, security, and compliance leaders.

We already run pen tests annually. Why do we need DevSecOps?
Annual pen tests show your security posture on one day per year, and only after vulnerabilities have accumulated for up to 12 months. DevSecOps means every code commit is tested, vulnerabilities are caught within minutes, and your security posture is continuously improving rather than cyclically degraded.
How does this fit into an existing agile delivery process?
Our security engineers embed directly into your sprint teams - writing security stories, configuring pipeline tooling, and acting as the security champion. We don't slow delivery down; we build the guardrails that let your teams ship faster with confidence.
Can you produce evidence to satisfy our regulator (FCA/PRA/ICO/PCI-DSS)?
Yes. We produce compliance evidence packs: penetration test reports, vulnerability remediation records, audit trails from SAST/DAST tooling, and security posture assessments aligned to your specific regulatory framework.
What's the difference between SAST, DAST, and VAPT - and do we need all three?
SAST (Static Application Security Testing) analyses your source code before it runs, catching vulnerabilities at the earliest possible point. DAST (Dynamic Application Security Testing) tests the running application from the outside, mimicking how an attacker would approach it. VAPT (Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing) goes further, combining automated scanning with expert-led exploitation to find what automated tools miss. Most organisations benefit from all three working together as layers of a defence-in-depth approach.
NFE Capability Pillars

Find Out Which Pillar Deserves Your Attention First

Our free NFE Maturity Assessment takes less than 2 weeks and gives you a clear, prioritised view of your non-functional risk exposure — and a roadmap to address it.