Latitude Financial: Powering Consumer Credit Across Australia and New Zealand
Latitude Financial is a leading consumer credit organization across Australia and New Zealand, providing personal loans and retail financing solutions. The company enables customers to purchase everything from cars to appliances through flexible payment plans, partnering with major retailers to offer interest-free financing up to 60 months.
The Challenge: Dynamic Cloud Growth Outpaced Security Visibility
Latitude Financial’s cloud transformation began in 2017-2018, migrating from on-premises data centers to a multi-cloud architecture spanning AWS, Azure, and Oracle Cloud. While this delivered needed agility, it created new security challenges. “The cloud’s really fast and it’s designed to be, but that comes with its own little risks,” Tony explains. “You just feel like you don’t have good visibility because it is so dynamic and fast moving.”
When a major Australian company suffered a high-profile breach in 2022 due to API misconfiguration, it reinforced the urgency for proactive security measures. “We wanted to identify things like that before they became a problem—like an S3 bucket being exposed to the web with customer data in it. We did not want to go there,” Tony notes.
Choosing Orca: Better Context, Smarter Consolidation
After comprehensive market research and customer reference calls, Orca stood out for two key reasons. First, superior vulnerability context proved crucial during POC testing. “What the other product identified as critical, you guys didn’t. You guys had better context for the vulnerability,” Tony recalls. This was essential for their small security team that couldn’t afford to chase false positives.
Second, Orca’s shift-left integration capabilities offered significant operational benefits. “The thing that really set Orca apart was the shift-left capability. Being able to consolidate tool sets creates efficiency, not just in cost but in how you manage all this stuff,” Tony explains.
Immediate Impact: From Blind Spots to Complete Visibility
Since onboarding in March 2023, Orca has delivered immediate comprehensive visibility across Latitude Financial’s entire cloud environment. “We now have complete visibility of the cloud. The guys that use the tool absolutely love it—it’s become one of our primary tools for vulnerability identification,” Tony states.
The platform’s speed has proven crucial during major incidents like log4j. “If that happens again, I’m confident we’d have pretty good visibility fairly quickly,” Tony notes. Orca also integrates seamlessly into their existing DevOps workflows, with vulnerabilities flowing directly from Orca into Axonius and then into ServiceNow for automated assignment to resolver groups.
The Bottom Line: A Security Team That Won’t Let Go
The security team’s enthusiasm for Orca is unmistakable. “The guys that use the tool absolutely love it,” Tony states. “It’s become one of our primary tools for vulnerability identification.” This level of user satisfaction has made Orca an indispensable part of their security operations.
For financial services organizations navigating cloud transformation, Latitude Financial’s experience shows how intelligent security platforms enable growth while maintaining strict security requirements. The combination of comprehensive visibility, contextual intelligence, and seamless integration creates a foundation for secure innovation at cloud speed.
