Fastly > Case Studies > Maritz Enhances Security and Compliance with Fastly Next-Gen WAF

Maritz Enhances Security and Compliance with Fastly Next-Gen WAF

Technology Category

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Event-Driven Application
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Virtual Private Cloud

Applicable Industries

Cement
National Security & Defense

Applicable Functions

Product Research & Development

Use Cases

Tamper Detection
Traffic Monitoring

About The Customer

Maritz is a holding company that provides a variety of services to Fortune 500 companies and beyond. Its businesses offer market and customer research, customer loyalty programs, sales incentives, employee rewards and recognition programs, and meeting, event, and travel incentive services. The company has multiple business units and applications, each with different technology stacks. Maritz needed a single, easy-to-use security solution that could be deployed across all its current and future hosting environments, whether physical or virtual, on-premises or cloud-based.

The Challenge

Maritz, a holding company providing a range of services to Fortune 500 companies, faced a significant challenge in enhancing its security posture to support PCI DSS requirement 6.6. Several of its business units accept credit card information, necessitating annual reporting on PCI DSS compliance. The company decided to implement a web application firewall as an additional layer of security for its PCI environment. However, with numerous business units and applications, each with different technology stacks, Maritz needed a single product that could be deployed across all current and future hosting environments, whether physical or virtual, on-premises or cloud-based. The company had previously used an open-source solution that required extensive manual effort to operate, so they were looking for a solution that offered ease of use, automated blocking, and simple deployment.

The Solution

Maritz chose to deploy the Fastly Next-Gen WAF, powered by Signal Sciences, initially to 5% of its corporate application footprint. The deployment was so successful that Maritz is now expanding it to cover 90% of total applications across multiple business units. The Signal Sciences solution offered simple deployment, which accelerated adoption across teams and tech stacks. It provided an additional layer of security without impacting legitimate traffic or performance, or requiring changes to complicated firewall rules. The software was deployed directly to the web server, eliminating the need to change traffic flow. Maritz also uses Signal Sciences' dashboards to monitor agent status and identify flagged IPs, which has increased confidence and facilitated deeper security discussions. The solution's support for varied infrastructure used by different business units was another key factor in its successful deployment.

Operational Impact

The deployment of Signal Sciences' solution has brought several operational benefits to Maritz. It has provided visibility at the application layer, enabling the infrastructure services group to have more meaningful conversations with engineers about application security. The solution's automatic traffic categories have given application engineers insight into anomalies, many of which can be cleaned up with minimal effort. The virtual patching capability has provided insights into common vulnerabilities exposure (CVEs), allowing the team to block malicious attempts and buy time to fix the underlying vulnerability. The solution has also integrated seamlessly with Maritz's existing Security Operations Center and standard operating procedures, eliminating the need for a new team to manage the product.

Quantitative Benefit

Expanded coverage to 90% of total applications across multiple business units
Automated blocking of certain attack patterns that previously required manual investigation and mitigation
No need for dedicated full-time employees to manage the product