Why custom tooling
Off-the-shelf security tools detect known CVEs and common misconfigurations. They do not know your payment flow, your mobile banking authentication or your API architecture, so they miss the business-logic flaws, authentication bypasses and data-exposure paths specific to them.
Custom tooling is built around your technology stack, deployment pipeline and compliance requirements, so your team gets findings it can act on and far fewer false positives. Once built, the tools run on every change.
Every tooling engagement is built in-house by the practitioner who leads our testing, and his open-source work is public. He is a top contributor to Honeyscanner, an open-source honeypot vulnerability analyser that attacks a honeypot to find out whether it is vulnerable. It was built during Google Summer of Code 2023 with the Honeynet Project, and he co-presented it with his co-authors at Black Hat Europe 2023 Arsenal in London. You can read the code before you hire us to write yours.
The practitioner who writes the tools also leads our offensive testing, so the tools are maintainable and reflect how attackers work. For organisations that also need ongoing review, we recommend combining custom tooling with our managed security retainer.
How a custom tooling engagement works
Every engagement follows the same six stages, and your team owns and operates the result.
Requirements discovery
We map your technology stack, CI/CD pipeline, security pain points, and compliance requirements. You tell us what you need secured; we design the tooling.
Architecture design
Technical design document covering tool architecture, integration points, data flows, and deployment strategy. You approve before we write a line of code.
Development
Iterative development with regular demos. We build in sprints, so you can give feedback throughout.
Testing
Full testing against your environment. We validate detection accuracy, false positive rates, performance impact, and integration stability.
Deployment
Production deployment with documentation, runbooks and training, so your engineers can operate and extend the tools themselves.
Support and iteration
Maintenance and updates as threats and your environment change, under a support agreement sized to your needs.
Who this is for
Custom tooling suits organisations whose needs go beyond off-the-shelf scanners and standard SAST/DAST tools.
- Banks and BNR-supervised enterprises: commercial banks, microfinance institutions, and payment service providers that need automated security testing for financial applications
- Government and ministries: public-sector bodies needing automated security testing built into citizen-facing systems and critical infrastructure
- Telecoms and mobile money operators: organisations handling millions of transactions daily that need recurring automated security validation
- Healthcare and insurance: hospitals and insurers managing sensitive patient and policyholder data needing automated security checks integrated into their development workflow
- Fintechs and development teams: fast-moving companies that need security checks in their CI/CD pipeline without slowing down releases
- DevSecOps teams: internal security teams that need custom tooling to scale their security testing across multiple applications and environments
Compliance alignment
Custom security tooling helps organisations meet ongoing compliance requirements through automation. The tools we build map directly to regulatory frameworks:
- BNR Regulation N° 50/2022 on cyber security: requires an annual penetration test and vulnerability assessments twice a year. Pipeline security checks add testing on every code change in between; they add to those assessments and do not replace them
- PCI DSS v4.0: Requirement 6.2 requires secure development practices and software security testing throughout the development lifecycle. SAST/DAST pipeline integration supports this requirement on every build
- ISO 27001:2022: Annex A Control 8.25 (Secure development lifecycle) requires security to be embedded throughout the development process. Custom pipeline tools apply it on every build
- Rwanda Data Protection Law N° 058/2021: Article 47 requires data controllers and processors to adopt appropriate technical measures to ensure the security of personal data. Automated security testing and compliance reporting tools provide continuous evidence that supports this obligation
The compliance reporting tools we build for clients generate audit-ready evidence mapped to these frameworks. For more on BNR requirements, see our guide on BNR cybersecurity requirements for banks in Rwanda. You may also find our article on API security for banking relevant if your tooling needs involve API protection.
Frequently asked questions
What kind of custom security tools do you build?
How long does a custom tooling engagement take?
Do you provide ongoing support for custom tools?
Can you integrate security tools into our existing CI/CD pipeline?
How much does custom security tooling cost?
Why build custom tools instead of using off-the-shelf scanners?
Do your tools help with compliance requirements?
Talk to us about your tooling needs
Tell us what you need automated. We reply within 24 hours to set up a scoping call, and a fixed-price proposal follows within 48 hours of that call.