At a Glance
A financial services company with outdated infrastructure was having issues complying with payment card industry security standards. Migrating to AWS, with Eviden’s support, did more than resolve the issues.
Outcomes
- Maintained compliance
- Ensured US data security and residency
- Enhanced system availability and performance
- Reduced recovery times
The Client
The US-based finance company provides credit solutions to consumers who don’t meet the requirements of mainstream lenders.
Compliance drives change
If an organization processes credit card data, it must comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) for architecture and service of IT systems. A US-based consumer finance company with outdated infrastructure was having trouble meeting some of the requirements:
- Data localization
- Ensuring US data residency
- Encrypting cardholder data using industry-accepted methods.
PCI DSS also demands robust encryption key management and continuous assessment of PCI zones to maintain security and business continuity.
The outdated infrastructure was causing several problems:
- Lack of agility: Legacy systems failed to meet evolving business needs, risking security and compliance. The aging tech also prevented the company from adapting quickly to market changes and developing new services.
- System downtime: Frequent outages led to customer dissatisfaction and potential financial and reputational damage.
- Data security and compliance: The old infrastructure lacked the necessary advanced security measures, falling short of PCI DSS standards. This included issues with out-of-support systems that couldn’t receive critical updates, leading to vulnerabilities.
- Cost: Maintaining these outdated systems was expensive, with projected costs reaching $3 million (US) annually including disruptions.
By migrating to AWS, the finance company addressed these challenges, enhancing data security, ensuring regulatory compliance and improving operational efficiency.
Why Eviden
Eviden is an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner and AWS Marketplace Seller supporting a global client base by bringing together people, business and technology. A 12-year AWS partner, Eviden has 16 AWS Competencies, including Migration Consulting, and is also a member of the AWS Managed Service Provider (MSP) and AWS Well-Architected Partner Programs.
Migration components
Eviden designed and deployed a solution that migrated the company’s infrastructure to the AWS platform. The solution prioritized enhancing performance, fortifying data security, and ensuring adherence to financial regulations and data sovereignty. The cornerstone of this transformation was the strategic landing zone design, which entailed a multi-account AWS structure featuring distinct organizational units for sandbox, security, infrastructure, production, and non-production environments.
The deployment leveraged Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances, distributed across multiple availability zones within the east and west US regions, to host workloads. This ensured data sovereignty and resilience. To further enhance security and connectivity, the network architecture included both private and DMZ subnets, coupled with a web application firewall (WAF) to shield against web exploits. Application load balancers (ALBs) were integrated to efficiently distribute incoming traffic across the EC2 instances, thereby augmenting fault tolerance.
The project teams also implemented rigorous security measures, including traffic control managed by security groups at various network levels, complemented by vulnerability scanning services. For data protection and compliance, AWS KMS-encrypted disks were utilized, and separate virtual private clouds were established for PCI compliance, complete with traffic inspection and risk remediation measures.
The monitoring and logging systems were powered by AWS CloudWatch and SNS, ensuring vigilant oversight. In anticipation of potential disasters, a pilot light disaster recovery strategy facilitated the rapid scaling of a minimal running environment, with primary and secondary sites strategically located in the Ohio and Virginia regions, respectively.
Connecting all the components was a migration strategy that embraced a re-platforming approach, optimizing the infrastructure for cloud efficiency and scalability.
The project delivered many outcomes that sparked a new era of technological excellence and operational agility.
Taking credit for a successful transformation
By transitioning from legacy hardware, the consumer finance company effectively mitigated risks and reduced costs. And adopting AWS cloud-native services marked a pivotal shift, modernizing services and enhancing efficiency and scalability. This move notably improved systems availability and performance, setting a new benchmark for operational excellence.
The company also embraced operational improvements and adopted DevOps, achieving significant enhancements in system performance. Plans are underway to further develop DevOps practices, which will lead to a more streamlined infrastructure management.
Data sovereignty was meticulously maintained, with data locality preserved within the US through the strategic use of local AWS regions and robust encryption. This approach not only fortified data security but also ensured solution availability across multiple availability zones.
Experimentation and vendor integration were key highlights of the project, with the adoption of AWS enabling the finance company to leverage the AWS Marketplace for innovative experimentation.
The finance company’s commitment to data security remained unwavering, as evidenced by its ongoing PCI DSS compliance, ensuring the secure handling of payment card data.
Business continuity was bolstered through the implementation of a resilient multi-AZ architecture, which improved system availability and reduced recovery time in the event of disruptions.
The partnership with Eviden, a global AWS service provider with a local US presence, enhanced the finance company’s customer support and customer satisfaction, reinforcing its reputation and fostering customer trust.
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