Akamai, 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.
Founded in 2010, CashFlows was one of the first independent UK payments institutions accepted as a principal member of both Visa and Mastercard. As one of the first acquirers to move its platform into the cloud – and without legacy infrastructure holding it back – the company 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.
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, 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.
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.”
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 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.”
Jay Coley, Senior Director of Security Strategy and Planning at Akamai, added: “With the global threat landscape continuing to evolve and change, it’s crucial that businesses in the cloud have solutions in place to protect against any attacks which might cause disruption. Our team of security experts constantly use their global perspective to help customers such as CashFlows to protect against emerging threats that may not have reached the UK yet. CashFlows is an ambitious company and we aim to continue providing support as the company expands globally.”
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.
