Overview

CBQ Bank, one of the largest private banks in the Qatar region, undertook a comprehensive digital transformation initiative to modernize its legacy systems and establish enterprise-wide API governance. With APIWiz's unified platform, CBQ successfully established centralized API governance, enhanced security posture, and enabled teams to operate with unprecedented visibility across their API ecosystem.

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Background

Legacy systems, fragmented tooling, and manual processes blocking scale

CBQ's processes and systems had been built over several years. As the bank's API ecosystem grew, so did operational complexity.

While the bank had invested in multiple tools (Insomnia for testing, Kong for gateway management, AppDynamics for observability etc), the fundamental problem remained: No end-to-end visibility. Each tool provided microservice-level details but couldn't answer fundamental questions: Is this API compliant? Is it secure? Who owns it? How does it connect to other teams' work?

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Development was fragmented. 15+ domain teams operated in silos. This fragmentation meant:

• Manual API documentation, reviews, and compliance checks at every stage
• Manual gateway configuration with no enforcement of security policies
• No visibility into what 15+ teams were building or how they interconnected
• Reduced productivity, high TCO, and no effective governance framework

The bank couldn't scale this way. Manual processes created delays. Fragmented teams prevented effective integration. The surplus of disconnected tools inflated costs without delivering governance.

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Challenge

Establishing governance without sacrificing developer agility

CBQ needed a way to enforce governance, security, and compliance across all 15+ teams—but without slowing down development. The question was fundamental: how could the bank establish unified standards while maintaining the speed and flexibility developers needed?

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Solution

Platform-Wide API Governance and Productivity with APIwiz

To solve this, CBQ turned to APIWiz to establish unified API governance across the entire organization. The approach was simple: make governance transparent, not bureaucratic.

APIWiz followed a 3-step approach: Discover, Remediate, and Govern to establish enterprise-wide API governance and accelerate digital delivery for CBQ.

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Discover (Week 1-2)

The first step was establishing a complete picture of CBQ's API landscape. APIWiz deployed lightweight traffic hooks across CBQ's data plane including gateways, microservices, databases, and infrastructure to capture complete API traffic flow.
The Outcome
Within 1–2 weeks, CBQ achieved:

• Centralized API inventory built (true picture of all production APIs)
• End-to-end visibility into API consumption and status
• Shadow APIs identified (undocumented, risky)
• Zombie APIs identified (deprecated, consuming resources)
• Single source of truth for all stakeholders

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Remediate (Months 2-12)

Based on discovery findings, APIWiz's unified API management platform provided curated solutions to address CBQ's priorities:

‍Data Dictionary & Schema Reusability: Integration problems stemmed from data model inconsistencies—teams using different schemas for the same data. The centralized data dictionary enabled teams to reuse standardized schemas, solving integration challenges at their root.

Low-Code Design Studio: Replaced manual Word documents. Teams now have a collaborative studio where they design, version, and iterate on APIs before building. Change logs and revision tracking are built-in, out of the box.

Lean Sandbox: Teams had been using a code-first approach (designing in code, then documenting). The sandbox enables teams to mimic actual workflows before building microservices. This decouples frontend and backend teams, enables early approvals, and reduces wasted effort.

Test Suite: Teams can now design test scenarios for cross-functional use cases. Automated regression tests provide flexibility for QA teams and enable more predictable releases.

Gateway Studio: CBQ now manages Kong deployments directly through the APIWiz platform instead of manual configuration. This adds an operational governance layer and security controls across environments. Updates can be promoted across dev, UAT, and production with consistency.

Kong OSS Migration: CBQ migrated from Kong Enterprise (high TCO) to Kong open source. With APIWiz, they maintain the same level of security and governance while eliminating licensing overhead. There are no restrictions on the number of services they can deploy.

Govern 

For sustained governance and compliance, APIwiz enabled continuous monitoring, security enforcement, and operational control

Observability: APIWiz deployed eBPF-based observability for both Linux and Windows infrastructure, enabling deep visibility without intrusive instrumentation. Consolidated logs and traces provide visibility in a central dashboard across all environments. Operations teams gain full context across different environments to debug issues faster.

API Security: Automated security pipelines monitor API compliance continuously. CBQ started with a passive approach (alerts and notifications), then progressed to active traffic blocking as confidence in the framework grew. This data-driven approach to security enforcement replaced manual compliance checks.

Developer Portal: Centralized platform for teams to publish APIs, create developer apps, access API console for virtual testing, and publish rich API guides. Replaced scattered documentation and manual processes.

Results

Transformed from fragmented operations to unified, scalable governance

Visibility & Control: All 15+ domain teams now operate from a single API inventory and governance framework. No more silos. Teams can see what others are building and how APIs interconnect.

Speed to Market: Manual processes eliminated. Design, testing, and deployment are now automated. Security reviews no longer delay releases—governance is built into the platform by default.

Security & Compliance Enforced: Security policies auto-apply to every API. No reliance on developers to remember compliance requirements. Continuous monitoring replaces quarterly audits. Phased approach—starting with alerts, progressing to active blocking—ensures confidence before enforcement.

Cost Optimization: Migration from Kong Enterprise to Kong open source eliminated licensing costs. Automation reduced manual work across security teams, DevOps, and development. Reusable schemas eliminated duplicate API development.

Foundation for Scale: Over 12 months, CBQ established a governance framework, security automation, and observability system that scales with the organization. What once required manual oversight now runs on autopilot.

Conclusion

CBQ Bank transformed from fragmented, manual operations to unified, automated governance. By establishing centralized visibility and automating governance across design, testing, deployment, and security, CBQ positioned itself to scale API-driven services reliably and securely.

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