One of the world’s leading financial institutions is one of many that have a large number of IT applications based on various versions of the Java programming language, many of which are older and can't be patched nor updated to fix security vulnerabilities. After the Bank performed an inventory and discovered hundreds of internal applications using a mix of old and new versions of Java, they needed a way to protect them from cyber-attackers that exploit software flaws to commit fraud.

The Bank worked with security vendor Waratek to create a tool that enables Java applications to protect themselves from attacks. The Waratek product uses what Gartner technology analyst Joseph Feiman calls a "self-protecting" application approach, or Runtime Application Self Protection (RASP). According to Feiman, RASP detects and blocks attacks, and it operates in the application's runtime environment.