Iron sharpens iron: how Danske Bank teams challenge partners to improve

The award was presented during Chainguard’s customer conference, Assemble, on 17 March in New York City. From left to right: Parm Uppal, Chief Revenue & Customer Officer at Chainguard; Lina Zaliauskiene, Developer Experience Tribe Lead at Danske Bank; Meghan Poglitsch, Customer Success Team Lead at Chainguard. 

The award reflects a way of working that goes beyond any single tool or project. At Danske Bank, partnerships operate in a complex, highly regulated environment, where decisions must scale across large systems and meet strict security requirements. That context makes early challenge, clear expectations, and open dialogue essential – not optional.  

“This award belongs to everyone at Danske Bank who contributed and pushed boundaries – adopting secure images, reducing vulnerabilities, engaging with Chainguard, and driving organisation‑wide adoption. The teamwork has truly raised the bar.” – says Lina Zaliauskiene, Developer Experience Tribe Lead. 

Challenging as a way of working 

Danske Bank’s collaboration with Chainguard began at the start of 2025, when teams were looking for a more secure and efficient way to manage container images and reduce the rising volume of vulnerabilities across applications. The goal was straightforward: strengthen security while giving developers a safer, more reliable foundation for building and running software. 

As the solution rolled out across the organisation, teams quickly began spotting areas that could work better for our needs. They raised issues around workflows, usability, and tooling – not to block progress, but to make sure the solution would genuinely support developers at scale. Instead of accepting workarounds, teams worked directly with Chainguard to resolve challenges and improve the overall setup. 

This way of working – open, direct, and focused on long‑term quality – is exactly what led to the Iron Sharpens Iron award. Our feedback resulted in concrete updates to Chainguard’s images and tooling, shaping how their product evolved and turning what began as an implementation into a genuine partnership. 

“Even before they became a Chainguard customer, Danske Bank was pushing us to innovate and challenging our team to create a secure way to deploy custom container images across their organisation. That collaboration directly led to the creation of Chainguard Custom Assembly, which now enables engineering teams everywhere to reduce risk and improve their productivity by building images tailored to their own environments. We’re proud of the partnership we’ve built together. Danske Bank is a truly deserving recipient of this year’s Iron Sharpens Iron Guardian Award.” – says Patrick Donahue, SVP of Product at Chainguard.  

Why this matters 

The progress achieved so far reflects not only technical implementation, but consistent communication, follow up, and a shared commitment to improving how Danske Bank works with its partners. This award is a reminder that how we work with partners can be just as important as the solutions we choose.  

"At Danske Bank, we cultivate a culture where security is a shared responsibility across the organisation. It’s part of how we work every day-not only in the solutions we build but also in the expectations we set for the partners we work with. Protecting trust in our brand and services means combining a strong security culture with well-designed controls that enable the business rather than slow it down. 

Containers bring greater efficiency and flexibility than traditional servers, but they also introduce additional complexity when it comes to standard security measures such as malware protection, patching and vulnerability management. Through our partnership with Chainguard, we’ve been able to significantly reduce both risk exposure and operational friction for container images while actively contributing to the evolution of their products. It’s a collaboration that strengthens security on both sides and delivers real value beyond our own organisation,” says Lance McGrath, Chief Security Officer.