Snyk

Challenges

The Snyk team is no stranger to using DLP. But before Nightfall, they weren’t able to find a solution that had the visibility and controls that they were looking for. “We wanted to see what was being shared in what apps, both externally and internally, intentionally and unintentionally,” explains Victor Sogaolu, Staff Security Engineer at Snyk. “With other DLP tools, it was always a case of catching sensitive data after the fact, as opposed to catching it immediately.” 

The Snyk team was also on the lookout for a solution with fewer false positive alerts and smoother security workflows. “False positives mean that the time you spent on triage and investigation is wasted,” Victor says. “Our previous tools required a lot of triaging. We spent a massive amount of time on them because of low accuracy. You’d get alerts, chase them down, and find out they were false positives. There’s only so long you can do that before your confidence level drops.”

Last, but not least, Snyk wanted to ensure that their new solution wouldn’t impact user workflows. “With DLP tools, there’s always a fine balance between usability and security,” Victor says. “We have to protect Snyk’s resources while enabling users to do their everyday work.”

Lucky for Snyk, Nightfall had the reliability, flexibility, and innovation they sought. 

Solutions

Hi-res visibility and actionable alerts 

As the cybersecurity adage goes, “You can’t secure what you can’t see.” With over a dozen native integrations and an extensible API for custom apps, Nightfall gives Snyk unprecedented visibility across Slack, GitHub, Jira, Google Drive, and more—all in real time. 

“Increased visibility can help us to take action and increase effective behaviors.” 

But getting widespread coverage is just the first piece of the puzzle. As Victor puts it: “The first stage is identifying sensitive data. The next stage is being able to do something about it.” 

This starts with the Nightfall dashboard, which consolidates all alerts into a single pane of glass. Here, the Snyk team sorts their alerts according to risk score. This feature analyzes the data type, quantity, and user access of each violation to assign a score between “Low” and “Critical.” By addressing “Critical” violations from the get-go, Snyk drives down their time to remediation while saving hours on triage every week. 

“I like that the Nightfall UI brings everything into one place. We can easily address alerts without having to open up another portal.”

Frictionless security workflows

From triage to resolution, Nightfall automates Snyk’s workflows every step of the way. 

Automation is only possible due to Nightfall’s generative AI-powered detection engine, which leads the industry in precision and recall. In Snyk’s case, 94%* of the alerts that come in are true positives, which gave them the confidence to switch on automated remediation features across their integrations.

“The true positive rate is not just a made-up number. Nightfall is reliable. When it says there’s a detection, we trust that detection. For people in my field, that’s a big factor. You don’t want to waste time chasing ghosts.”

Victor dives further into the process, explaining how his team “Tweaked our detection rules to adjust them to our specific environments. Once that tweaking was done, we monitored for results. Our detector confidence was really high, which is why we switched on automated remediation. This means that we can auto-redact and auto-delete sensitive data. All I have to do is review what’s been acted upon already, as opposed to me chasing something that happened days ago.”

“Nightfall is flexible in terms of its customization options, as well as its integrations and API support. Thanks to this, our use of Nightfall is growing.”

Minimal user impact

Due to Nightfall’s best-in-class detection, Snyk doesn’t have to worry about impacting users. This opens the door to a myriad of other automated workflows, including user coaching and end-user remediation. 

“Snyk is a fast paced culture and our users primarily communicate and collaborate on Slack, so I needed a tool that could both support our speed and meet our employees where they already were," Victor explains.

"We’re a company largely made up of developers and engineers, and with that, comes a problem-solving mentality, innate curiosity, and an inclination to pressure test any new tool or technology. Nightfall understands that ethos and has worked closely with us to ensure we catch as many scenarios as possible and have them effectively covered.”

Nightfall’s “Human Firewall” feature notifies Snyk users on Slack whenever a potential violation of a security policy is detected. Nightfall also encourages users to remediate their potential violations themselves. “That’s a huge win because we don’t have to reach out manually,” Victor says. “And the change in user behavior has been massive.”

Conclusion

At Nightfall, our mission is to help companies like Snyk to maintain their robust security postures by giving them unparalleled visibility and lightning-fast workflows, all with minimal cost to the user. But when asked about his favorite part of Nightfall, Victor chimed in with: “The people. You can always see the people reflected in the tool. Nightfall gets better every day. It’s good to have a DLP tool that’s always innovating.”

* This true positive rate was measured from March–September, 2024.