Since prevention is better than cure, the firm chose a cloud native security platform to gain customer trust in the nascent digital-banking sector.

One of South-east Asia’s largest digital financing platform for small- and medium- sized enterprises was experiencing challenges in monitoring its overall cloud security posture and bridging the divide between security and DevOps in the development cycle.

Funding Societies operates multi-cloud setups across Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, and it is critical to deploy a cloud native security platform that could satisfy key security needs regardless of where it was deployed. However, native security tools often come with a different set of security standards and best practices, which made it difficult for the firm to monitor cloud security posture and straddle security and DevOps.

The firm has since solved the problem by adopting a comprehensive Cloud Native Security Platform (CNSP) to help secure its multi-cloud resources and workloads.

With this platform, Funding Societies reported that it is now able to effectively manage its distributed cloud resources, thereby meeting strict compliance requirements and scaling security operations to support the surge in demand for its services during the pandemic.

The firm’s Head of Information Security, Modalku, Shakthi Priya Kathirvelu, noted: “The ability to secure risks in a timely manner and build operational resilience has always been key priorities for us. (The CNSP solution) has helped us to elevate our security posture, while addressing gaps in regulatory compliance requirements and has also saved us valuable time and resources in the process.”

Prevention-based cloud security

The CNSP solution, provided by Palo Alto Networks, gives Funding Societies extensive visibility into its cloud environment to manage risks across all layers of its architecture using a single integrated platform.

Capabilities such as automated asset inventory, threat detection and response, as well as multi-cloud vulnerability monitoring and prioritization allow the firm to move security to the earliest possible point in the development process. This improves its overall security posture with more regular security checks throughout the application development lifecycle.

By establishing security controls for the entire stack, Funding Societies is able to protect its cloud infrastructure, identify and prevent breaches in real time, and ultimately protect sensitive customer data, according to Claribel Chai, Palo Alto Networks’ Singapore country manager: “For any business in financial services, a prevention-based approach to security is especially critical to gain customer trust while also adhering to stringent regulations. Having a holistic view of risk and vulnerabilities without multiple single-focus security tools will help organizations capture the unique benefits of the cloud, while ensuring a strong security posture to prevent cyberattacks.”