INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Enterprise Security
POWERED BY
UK FinTech, continues
growth with Akamai in face
of increasing cyberthreats
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A
kamai, the intelligent Edge platform
for delivering and securing web
experiences, has announced it is
protecting CashFlows, an innovative FinTech
offering comprehensive merchant services,
alternative payments and BIN Sponsorship
solutions (card issuing and ATMs), from
the growing threat of Distributed Denial of
Service (DDoS) attacks against its cloud-
based services.
however, the sector has become a popular
target for hackers. With DDoS attacks now
costing organisations on average US$1.7
million per year, the company needed to
introduce security solutions which could
mitigate the impact and protect data.
As one of the first acquirers to move its
platform into the cloud – and without legacy
infrastructure holding it back – CashFlows
has seen significant growth, with its
merchant acquiring customer base set to
double in 2019. It also powers more than
38,500 ATMs across Europe. Mat Peck, CTO, CashFlows, said: “The
consequences for failing to protect
transactions and payment data are
significant. While we utilise Amazon Web
Services to deliver our platform, we required
a local, bespoke and scalable solution to
these threats. We turned to Akamai, whose
global network and expertise makes sure
anyone anywhere in the world can make
local connections to our service in a way that
is resilient and thoroughly protected.”
Operating in the highly regulated financial
services industry, CashFlows is responsible for
keeping cardholder and personal data safe
for its customers and their customers. Thanks
to the growing popularity of online banking, Running on the Edge servers of the Akamai
Intelligent Edge Platform, Akamai Kona Site
Defender provides CashFlows with DDoS
mitigation and web application security on
a massive scale, with high availability and
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24/7 monitoring. Supporting this, Fast DNS
ensures CashFlows can continually provide
its services through local DNS servers, while
adding an extra layer of DDoS security.
Peck continued: “Even the shortest outage
from a DDoS attack means that customers
won’t be able to receive payments for
their services and will lose revenue. Any
sustained outage would not only impact
our customers, but also pose an existential
threat to the business. It’s reassuring to
know that even if CashFlows was to attract
a massive amount of security threats as it
continues to grow, cybercriminals will have
to get through Akamai’s security before they
can get to us.”
As part of its expansion, CashFlows plans to
add more payment methods to its platform
and introduce additional products such as
gateways, cryptocurrencies, data analytics and
alternative payment mechanisms. These will all
be supported by Akamai’s security solutions. n
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