CHALLENGE
Winning Group needed complete application layer protection and visibility that would scale with the growth of their e-commerce sales.
Winning Group is a growing appliance retailer based in Australia with half a dozen web properties operating under its name.
Future expansion and growth, including M&A activity, prompted the Winning Group team to strengthen their overall security posture at the application layer to protect customer-facing web applications, payment gateways, customer portals and APIs.
Before Signal Sciences, Winning Group used different methods to secure their web applications, including maximizing best practices for their CDN, firewall, and coding methods. But the problems they experienced indicated that this strategy wouldn’t scale as the company grew:
No Real-time Visibility
After-the-fact log searches and triaging of web attacks were possible, but Winning Group lacked the ability to engage in real-time investigation or remediation. Staff had no insight into what level of web request traffic was real versus that generated by bots, making it difficult to parse a user’s true journey while on their sites.
Increased Man-Hours
Needed more automation to enable effective investigation of potential incidents versus manual work, which resulted in frequent context switching and lost productivity from many developers on the team
Responsive Support
Previously worked with a top CDN provider, but they did not enjoy the customer experience and services provided. Additionally, they also found the provider not developer friendly and slow to respond or take action.
“Deploying Signal Sciences was an eye-opener. We now have visibility into how much garbage traffic we receive and have the tools to block it. ”
– Dax Lee, Chief Technology Officer
SOLUTION
Winning Group needed a WAF solution that would automate manual processes, increase visibility into their web traffic activity, and improve incident response time. Signal Sciences delivered the performance and insight they need to scale confidently. Winning Group’s CTO Dax Lee and technology partner Section.io selected Signal Sciences next-gen WAF based on our industry reputation and ability to meet the challenges the company faced.
The key evaluation criteria included:
- Effective automated detection and blocking in production
- Integrating with Section.io
- Visibility into traffic and attacks at the web attack layer
- Hands-off maintenance
After starting in monitoring mode for a week, Winning Group became a customer in just a month. And with implementation provided by Section.io, it was a hands-off deployment and configuration process. Signal Sciences now protects four of their web properties and will expand to others.
Visibility and Insights
The Signal Sciences dashboard and tagging capabilities gave Winning Group new insights into their application layer activity. They now see and stop traffic spikes that slow down search queries, improving app performance and provide their customers an overall better shopping experience. Winning Group CTO Dax Lee says, “Deploying Signal Sciences was an eye-opener. We now have visibility into how much garbage traffic we receive and have the tools to block it.”
Customer-focused Support
Signal Sciences always puts our customers’ needs first, and Winning Group has seen firsthand what it means to be a partner. “Signal Science’s support team is on-par with some of the best. Unlike other vendors we’ve worked with, they have fast response times and are always on point. Their personal approach and fast response times made us feel secure we made the right choice.”
Reduced Developer Time
Winning Group didn’t want another tool to manage: the solution needed to provide automated protection without additional overhead. Key site metrics and KPIs in the Signal Sciences unified management console dramatically reduced the amount of resources required to triage incidents, while our automated detection and blocking capabilities ensured a “hands-off” approach from the dev teams.
“Signal Science’s support team is on-par with some of the best. …Their personal approach and fast response times made us feel secure we made the right choice.”
– Dax Lee, Chief Technology Officer