Download PDF

Signal Sciences > Case Studies > Scaling Security Where Performance is Critical with Signal Sciences

Scaling Security Where Performance is Critical with Signal Sciences

Technology Category

Cybersecurity & Privacy - Cloud Security

Applicable Functions

Maintenance

Use Cases

Cybersecurity

Services

Cybersecurity Services

The Challenge

Datadog is a monitoring and security platform service for cloud applications. Thousands of customers rely on Datadog to see metrics and events from software across their DevOps stack, such as cloud and security monitoring, alerts, logs, and more. Founded in 2010, the company rapidly scaled to serve its global customers by embracing the value of modern engineering and architecture practices.

As the organization continued to grow, Datadog’s security team knew that their homegrown application security tools would not scale at the rate required to support a rapidly growing customer base. Adopting a WAF was the next move, but Datadog required one that provided flexibility in modern cloud architectures, supported a rapid CI/CD pipeline’s code changes and deployments without extensive tuning, and didn’t unnecessarily consume resources across security, SRE, and development teams.

The Customer

Datadog

About The Customer

Datadog is an observability service for cloud-scale applications, providing monitoring of servers, databases, tools, and services, through a SaaS-based data analytics platform.

The Solution

The Only Next-Gen WAF for Modern Applications

As a leader in the DevOps space, Datadog has championed cloud-native applications built with the latest tools and best practices. Their organization needed a security solution that can easily adapt to their bespoke architectures: Signal Sciences was the only vendor that could keep up with their pace while filling their gaps.

Low TCO with No Tuning or Maintenance

Datadog delivers on its value proposition—a single pane of glass for all your app monitoring needs—by pushing code dozens of times per day to meet customer needs. The security team knew it would be too difficult for a legacy WAF to understand and tune to the constant changes in their application.

No Performance Impact on Application or Organization

One of the main complaints about legacy WAF is the negative impact across the organization. Whether it’s blocking legitimate users from accessing a site, slowing applications, or using up DevOps resources to triage emergencies, performance issues are a top priority for teams evaluating WAFs. After deploying Signal Sciences, Datadog has reported zero performance issues across the board.

Operational Impact

[Data Management - Cyber Security]
Stakeholders from Security, DevOps, and Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) teams reported no false positive issues, resulting in zero negative impact on legitimate traffic.

Related Case Studies.

Enel Secures Italian Power Generation Network

Electric energy operators around the world are working to increase the reliability and cyber resiliency of their systems. This includes Enel, a global power company that manages and monitors the Italian power grid. This grid:• Serves 31 million customers• Has a net installed energy capacity exceeding 31 gigawatts• Includes more than 500 power generation plants,including hydroelectric, thermoelectric, and wind• Is managed and monitored by Enel 24/7/365• Is operated by Terna, the Italian Transmission System Operator (TSO)Enel is responsible for the availability of the grid’s underlying ICS and industrial network. It also manages Regional Control Centers and Interconnection Centers which connect with the TSO. The TSO manages the flow of energy to the grid plus controls and remotely regulates the power generation of power plants, increasing and decreasing power production as required. The complex system of interaction and cooperation between Enel and the TSO has strong security implications as well as operational and business challenges.

Securing the Connected Car Ecosystem

In-vehicle communications and entertainment system hosts high-value or sensitive applications. API libraries facilitate communication and sharing of vehicle data. These API libraries are vulnerable to reverse engineering and tampering attacks and may even result in loss of passenger safety. Attackers can inject malware that may be able to migrate to other in-car networks such as the controller-area-network (CAN) bus which links to the vehicle’s critical systems. Software provided for dealers to interface with cars through the OBD2 port is vulnerable to reverse engineering and tampering attacks. Hackers may be able to abuse these tools to inject malicious code into the ECUs and CAN bus. Attackers can lift the cryptographic keys used, and use that to build their own rogue apps/software. Their cloned version of the original app/software may have altered functionality, and may intend to gain access to other in-car networks.

Secure and Cloud-based Data Marketplace

The great promise of new connected concepts of industry like 'Industry 4.0' is their ability to deliver a historically unparalleled level of responsiveness and flexibility. While modern supply chains are already heavily integrated and designed to be fluid and fast moving, a large swathe of manufacturing still remains beholden to economies of scale, large production runs, and careful preplanning.The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is set to change this by allowing small-batch or even custom manufacturing on a truly industrial scale. With machines whose functions are not set in stone, but flexible and determined by their operating software and with a new form of connectivity bringing industrial engineers, product manufacturers, and end users closer together than ever before. Ad-hoc adjustments to automotive parts, for example, during active product runs or the bespoke manufacturing of custom sneakers become very viable options indeed.Much of this remains a theoretical vision, but IUNO, the German national reference project for IT security in Industry 4.0 demonstrates the new capabilities in action with a secure technology data marketplace running a smart drinks mixer.

Expedia Hosted by 2lemetry Through AWS

Expedia is committed to continuous innovation, technology, and platform improvements to create a great experience for its customers. The Expedia Worldwide Engineering (EWE) organization supports all websites under the Expedia brand. Expedia began using Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2010 to launch Expedia Suggest Service (ESS), a typeahead suggestion service that helps customers enter travel, search, and location information correctly. According to the company’s metrics, an error page is the main reason for site abandonment. Expedia wanted global users to find what they were looking for quickly and without errors. At the time, Expedia operated all its services from data centers in Chandler, AZ. The engineering team realized that they had to run ESS in locations physically close to customers to enable a quick and responsive service with minimal network latency.

OTA Software Updates for Smart Energy (gridX)

gridX has a requirement for over-the-air software updates for their gridBox devices and used the Yocto Project for their builds. The driver for the requirement was having the ability to quickly support new features, as well as deploying bug fixed and path known security vulnerabilities. New software updates with a US stick manually to all gridBox devices in the field would be prohibitively expensive and labor-intensive.

Transformed IT Infrastructure Improves Business Agility

A global security, storage, and systems management software provider planned to demerge into two separate companies. To prepare, it undertook a major overhaul of its IT infrastructure and operations strategy. A key requirement: streamlining the Hosting Group, which handled compute, storage, and middleware operations. These functions had grown complex and had a wide geographic distribution. The company planned to bring them under closer in-house management.The company looked to increase its business agility so it could quickly and creatively respond to customer demands with improved internal collaboration and optimized go-to- market and IT service delivery capabilities. Modernizing IT functions, and making them more responsive, was critical to achieving these goals.

© 2015-2024 IoT ONE Limited | Privacy Policy

Contact us

Let's talk!

Thank you for your message!
We will contact you soon.