Crown Agents Bank (CAB) specialise in delivering vital financial solutions to developing countries. They provide advice and services such as foreign exchange, trade finance and investment management to their clients, many of whom are central banks and regulatory authorities looking to improve banking standards and economic growth. CAB are forward-thinking and embrace new technologies. They recently created EMpowerFX software, which provides direct trading access to emerging market currencies worldwide.

CAB were migrating to the AWS cloud platform. This meant they needed to upgrade their legacy firewalls to secure traffic between their on-premise and cloud environments. They decided the best solution was to extend their on-premise security solutions into the cloud by expanding their existing F5 and Check Point investment. This would enable them to use the firewall in both environments. However, their cloud environment was being managed by a third party who were using their own security solution.

To accommodate extra traffic between cloud and on-premise, Bytes’ security architects upgraded the F5 VE software to 1GB. They also deployed Check Point high availability (HA) software which has two systems – one actively processing traffic and one in standby mode until needed. This provides an uninterrupted service should one system fail and is ideal for businesses undergoing a cloud migration and needing secure connections. To ensure secure deployment of services in the cloud, Bytes’ specialists requested the third party’s compliance with Bytes security policies and procedures. Bytes now ensure that CAB’s cloud environment is fully secured via API inspection and encryption before any services are approved to go live.

Upgrading their F5 VE software has meant CAB can now secure traffic in and out of their cloud and on-premise environments. For an organisation operating in the financial sector and across borders, this added security provides much needed peace of mind. Additional HA software also means CAB will get a more reliable connection during their cloud migration. CAB saved £15k on their F5 upgrade and £30k on Check Point HA software. They are now looking at further security solutions from Bytes.