Sauce Labs, the world's largest continuous testing cloud for web and mobile applications, faced a significant challenge in protecting its web applications distributed across a hybrid cloud environment with different application stacks. The company's mission is to ensure that mobile applications and websites work flawlessly on every device, operating system, and browser, delivering an impeccable digital experience to users. However, the company was vulnerable to potential attack vectors, including click fraud and abuse of its free trial virtual machine offering. The Senior Director of Product Security, John Kennedy, was in search of a single technology that could defend against these threats and ensure the security of the company's web applications.

SeenThis, a Stockholm-based ad streaming company, was facing a series of challenges. The company, which works with 80 of the top 100 advertisers in over 40 countries, was dealing with an average of 40 billion requests per month from over 1,000 customers. Their proprietary adaptive streaming technology was designed to remove the limitations of conventional ad serving technology, but they were struggling with their existing first-generation CDN, which couldn't provide the necessary configuration for delivering custom content based on different variables. Additionally, their previous logging and monitoring system, which utilized open-source tools like nginx and RabbitMQ on AWS, was becoming slow and unreliable, making it difficult to manage the increasing number of requests. Furthermore, as environmental concerns became more pressing, SeenThis needed more detailed reporting capabilities to evidence their unique mix of performance and sustainability.

SeenThis, a Stockholm-based ad streaming company, was facing a series of challenges. The company, which works with 80 of the top 100 advertisers in over 40 countries, was dealing with an average of 40 billion requests per month from over 1,000 customers. Their proprietary adaptive streaming technology was designed to remove the limitations of conventional ad serving technology, but they were struggling with their existing content delivery network (CDN) which couldn't provide the necessary configuration for delivering custom content based on different variables. Additionally, their previous logging and monitoring system began showing signs of aging by 2018, becoming slow and unreliable. The team struggled to manage the increasing number of requests required to serve its customers. Furthermore, when data transfer reduction emerged as a pressing environmental concern in 2020, SeenThis needed more detailed reporting capabilities to evidence their unique mix of performance and sustainability.

Shoptimize, a pioneer of AI solutions for direct-to-consumer (D2C) retail platforms, was facing challenges in scaling its services. The company needed to provide a seamless online experience for its users, regardless of whether there were 5,000 or 5 million users online. The company was also looking for a next-generation Web Application Firewall (WAF) solution that could offer performance and PCI-DSS compliance at scale. Their previous WAF providers were not able to meet the caching challenge and were too expensive for effective customer onboarding. Shoptimize needed a solution that could offer predictable costs, scale as needed, and integrate with their existing tech stack. They also required a low-latency WAF to block spam traffic and bad bots without slowing down or blocking desirable traffic.

Pronovias Group, a global business group that designs, manufactures, and sells wedding dresses and evening gowns, faced a unique challenge. The company operates six brands, each with its own online portal. Unlike traditional e-commerce portals, these websites serve as a gateway for customer relationships and as a booking point for in-person appointments, linking the online experience with the in-store experience. The challenge was to optimize these experiences and bring them on par with the personalized and exclusive service offered in-store. The online stores required fast and frictionless loading in users’ web browsers. Pronovias Group was looking for a universal solution for all of its brands that would facilitate the daily management of their online presence while allowing them to handle traffic without losing connectivity from anywhere in the world. It was also essential to protect the websites and distinguish between different types of requests to rule out all kinds of attacks.

Network 10, a major Australian television network, faced a significant challenge in delivering a seamless live stream of the Melbourne Cup, Australia's premier horse race and the network's biggest sporting event. The race is not only broadcast on free-to-air television but also offered as a live stream from the company’s website. The challenge was to ensure uninterrupted delivery of the live stream at a time when traffic levels reach the highest point of the year. The selection of the underlying platform was critical to achieving this. Network 10 aimed to provide a first-class experience to all viewers, with top-quality audio and video delivered without interruption or buffering. The network also needed to prepare for any spontaneous spikes in traffic and troubleshoot any issues that may arise during the event.

New Relic, an observability platform, was in need of a partner that could scale with them and ensure high-level data availability, scalability, and performance. The company's core data platform ingests data from around the world and makes it available in near real-time. The availability of this data is crucial for New Relic's customers, as they rely on it for important functions such as alerting and monitoring. If the data doesn't reach New Relic's systems, these functions won't trigger or appear, causing significant issues for their customers. New Relic was also looking to improve performance and was in search of a partner that could provide a service that was performant, scalable, and reliable.

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.

GIPHY, a platform that serves billions of stickers, clips, and GIFs daily to its global user base, faced the challenge of delivering content seamlessly, reliably, and cost-effectively. The platform's content enhances conversations across various social media and communication tools, including iMessage, Facebook, Snapchat, and TikTok. The challenge was to ensure a speedy, lag-free search experience for GIPHY end users. Additionally, GIPHY needed to protect its platform from malicious traffic and reduce traffic to origins for cost savings. The company also required data logs to drive analytics and future content development, and needed to maintain agility in the development of platform enhancements.

api.video, a European-based company that provides video encoding, delivery, and hosting services, faced significant challenges in scaling its video delivery via its Content Delivery Network (CDN). The company was using a niche CDN provider, CDNetworks, for its two data centers in Canada and Europe. However, the provider was unable to meet the growing demands of api.video. The company faced issues with poor cache performance under full load, especially during live streaming events. This issue was so severe that it restricted product access and hindered the company's scaling efforts. Additionally, the CDN provider only made logs accessible once per day, which made quick mitigation of any abuse impossible. The company also faced issues with opaque routing within its old CDN, which was suboptimal and offered no control. Furthermore, api.video wanted to leverage future features that the previous CDN provider would not allow due to lacking features or mandated policies. These features included supporting custom domains, domain referrer restrictions, the ability to control request log data, and support for the Cloud Data Management Capabilities (CDMC) framework and built-in optimizations for video use cases.

Atresmedia, a leading communication group in Spain, has been expanding its streaming package since its launch, which is a key line of business for the company. The company has turned to live streaming for broadcasting important events, such as sports finals or elections, which have high ratings. Users expect an experience similar to that of broadcast television, with no delays and zero latency. To cater to the increased traffic levels generated by live events, it was crucial for Atresmedia to prepare its entire infrastructure and partner with a CDN to support it, ensuring zero downtime, even if they experienced a tremendous spike in the number of users. The main challenges of live streaming that Atresmedia wanted to address were avoiding latency, improving the quality of the user experience, offering a reliable and scalable architecture that is able to absorb large and unpredictable traffic spikes, reducing the costs associated with live streaming, and having greater control in order to make autonomous, quick changes through API or UI.

Brandfolder, a digital asset management platform, was facing challenges with its content dissemination feature, the Smart CDN. The company was initially performing eager image transformations, which involved creating different renditions of an image as soon as it was ingested. While this approach could potentially speed up request response times, it significantly increased the ingest time, causing delays for customers. Another challenge was the process of adding watermarks to images. Each image was individually watermarked by Brandfolder and stored until it needed to be served. This process was not only time-consuming but also increased storage costs. Furthermore, the company was looking to update their thumbnailing process, which involved generating thumbnails for all assets in their system. The existing process was creating bottlenecks and hindering scalability.

Axon, a leading self-defense company, operates Evidence.com, a platform that handles a constant flow of digital evidence from various law enforcement and public safety agencies across the globe. The platform is used to manage digital evidence in a secure, scalable, and efficient way, allowing agencies to focus on the use of the data rather than the burden of managing it. Given the highly sensitive and personal nature of this information, security is of paramount importance. However, traditional Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) were not compatible with Axon's modern architecture and couldn't be effectively deployed in production blocking mode. Axon's security team built their own detection rules and evaluated multiple WAF technologies, but were not satisfied with any of the legacy solutions available on the market. They found themselves spending too much of their operational resources maintaining their homegrown web application security solution, which didn’t provide robust blocking capabilities and was only as good as the rules written for it.

Prezi, a cloud-based presentation platform with over 100 million users, was facing a significant challenge due to its tremendous growth. The company was seeking to replace an existing, labor-intensive tool with a new web application firewall (WAF) to provide automated, accurate protection for their web applications. Previously, Prezi used an open source IDS/IPS solution. As a cloud-based platform, Prezi’s primary goal was to have a WAF with enterprise-grade detection and response capabilities. They needed a solution that could automatically and reliably detect attack patterns on web traffic without the noise (hundreds of notifications to matches on RegEx signatures) and provide integrations to gain advanced insights.

Duo, a leading cybersecurity company, was seeking to enhance the security visibility of its authentication platform and websites without introducing additional security or operational risks. The company's platform supports billions of authentication requests globally every week, and it was crucial to secure this traffic without negatively impacting the user experience or introducing additional security risks. Duo's previous experiences with hardware and cloud Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) had introduced single points of failure and had difficulties integrating into the path of traffic, prompting the need for an alternative approach.

MadeiraMadeira, an online marketplace specializing in home products and furniture, faced the challenge of improving online access for shoppers and providing reliable uptime. The company needed to expand its capacity to handle surges in website usage, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic when online traffic volume increased significantly. The company also faced difficulties in handling large volumes of images for its 2.3 million products. The process of compressing, resizing, and editing multiple images was time-consuming and inefficient. Additionally, MadeiraMadeira was looking to implement a multiple cloud strategy and tackle the offline market with a digital mindset.

LaunchDarkly, a feature management platform, was facing challenges in the fast-paced software development lifecycle. The company needed to balance the competing needs of speed and security. Speed was essential to improve products and keep users engaged, while security was necessary to ensure deployments did not cause disruptions or drive users to competitor apps. The company also needed to ensure that features could be rolled out without friction, or they risked their product's position in the app store rating. Additionally, LaunchDarkly required a solution to protect user experience in case of a disaster, without having to roll back code.

Jimdo, a company that powers over 20 million websites worldwide, was facing stiff competition from other website creation companies with massive marketing budgets. To stand out, Jimdo realized they needed to focus on quality product innovation and unparalleled customer service. However, they were burdened with complicated and time-intensive workflows and operations, which hindered their ability to innovate. They also faced the challenge of ensuring their websites were secure, fast, and scalable, regardless of the customer's device or location. Another significant challenge was the resizing of images on their customers’ sites to ensure they looked great on all devices. This was a key aspect of their business as many websites rely on beautiful photos to help sell their products and services.

JW Player, a leading platform for video delivery and intelligence, was facing a significant challenge in managing its rapidly increasing traffic. The company, which serves some of the biggest names in media, has seen its traffic grow exponentially as video strategy becomes central to business strategy. The company was dealing with a 900% increase in requests per second, scaling from 4,000 requests per second in 2019 to 40,000 requests per second in 2021. This growth was driven by both market expansion and pandemic-driven demand. The challenge was to maintain high availability and fast time-to-first-frame (TTFF), which are critical metrics for end-user engagement. Additionally, JW Player was grappling with rising origin costs and the need to simplify their tech stack.

LaunchDarkly, a pioneer in the field of Feature Management, was facing a challenge with its software development kit (SDK) in polling mode. The company was experiencing initialization rates of over one second in several locations worldwide, which was negatively impacting page-load times. This was due to the need to run logic at the origin for their flag management service, and some regions were simply too far away to be highly performant. This latency issue was a concern for clients with global customer bases, who were hesitant to use feature flags for certain use cases due to the potential for excessive latency. LaunchDarkly needed a solution that would bring their feature flagging service closer and faster to their customers, without compromising on security, performance, or resilience.

DeNA, a Japanese corporation specializing in digital portals, mobile games, and e-commerce platforms, was facing significant challenges with its legacy Web Application Firewall (WAF). The legacy WAF was not only expensive to operate but also had high response times, particularly during traffic spikes. This was a significant issue as DeNA was expanding its offerings and needed to scale its web security posture accordingly. The legacy WAF's admin portal loaded slowly during traffic spikes, preventing the team from addressing issues promptly. Moreover, it was impossible for the DeNA team to reroute customer page requests if their WAF was not performing correctly. The performance issues, coupled with the high cost of scaling hardware investments, made it clear that DeNA needed a new, more efficient solution.

BloomNation, an online flower retailer, faced a significant challenge in late 2019 when it was listed on Built In LA’s 50 Best Small Places to Work list. This recognition boosted their national profile but also attracted malicious actors to their website on a larger scale. The company was inundated with abusive attack traffic, including DDOS, SQLi, XSS, and credential stuffing, as malicious actors attempted to scan their web applications. This situation had a significant impact on the organization. Engineers had to divert their attention from building and deploying product features to manually researching and blocking IP addresses to keep the website operational. The surge in traffic also negatively affected the customer experience, with page load times slowing and the site breaking as attack requests increasingly hit their server instances. BloomNation needed a solution that could not only repel these attacks but also provide their engineering team with the ability to rate limit traffic to quickly tag and identify traffic signals based on custom criteria.

Betterment, an online financial advisor with over $14 billion in assets under management and a user base of over 380,000 customers, needed a solution to protect customer PII and financial assets. The company required a solution that could automatically scale and block attacks without impacting performance or requiring ongoing signature tuning. The company's Engineering and Security teams were particularly concerned about the signal-to-noise ratio based on their previous experience with legacy WAFs. It was crucial for them to find a WAF that could scale automatically and accurately block attacks without increasing support call volume or creating additional work for the Engineering or Security teams.

Blackpepper, a leading e-commerce services provider based in Auckland, New Zealand, faced a significant challenge during the 2020 pandemic lockdown. The firm experienced an exponential increase in traffic, with volumes surging by up to 400 times from the previous year. This sudden surge posed a risk to their operational excellence, and the firm needed to find a way to handle the increased traffic sustainably. Additionally, Blackpepper was also grappling with a wave of denial of service (DDoS) attacks targeting Australia and New Zealand, necessitating a bolstered security posture. At the time, Blackpepper's operations relied on an on-premise data centre and a range of in-house developed applications and tools, including a bespoke Web Application Firewall (WAF). They were also using an external content delivery network (CDN) to serve videos and images to each website. However, their existing vendor was unable to meet the demand for a CDN that delivered everything for their customers' websites, not just visuals.

Namely, a cloud-first, all-in-one HR platform, was experiencing rapid growth, which necessitated the prioritization of its web defense. As the customer base of Namely expanded, so did its responsibility for managing web defenses, including detection, prevention, and response. In a fast-paced agile development environment, security leader Daniel Leslie was tasked with building security and IT from scratch. He was seeking innovative ways to manage website defenses, having had experience with legacy Web Application Firewalls (WAFs). His core criteria for a solution included technical alignment, ease-of-use, best-in-class security functionality, and total cost of ownership (TCO).

Movember, a leading charity organization focused on men’s health, was facing a significant challenge with their web application firewall (WAF) deployment. They had been using a traditional WAF solution that was rigid and unable to scale during peak traffic periods without constant tuning and intervention from their team. This was particularly problematic as Movember had recently transitioned to a cloud environment to better serve their donors and campaign participants, and to streamline their organizational initiatives. The conventional WAF solutions they tried to implement were not compatible with their modern application infrastructure. After six months of struggling to fit a legacy WAF solution into their system, the solution was never fully implemented, causing frustration and resulting in a solution that had to be discarded and replaced.

Gannett, the largest news publisher in the U.S., faced a significant challenge in maintaining its competitive edge in the fast-paced world of digital news publishing. The company's previous content delivery solution relied on a time-to-live-based method for purging content, which resulted in a delay of 45 to 90 seconds before a piece of content could go live. This delay was a significant disadvantage in an industry where being the first to publish a story can significantly impact future traffic to a site. Additionally, Gannett's previous solution did not provide the granular control and visibility needed to handle large traffic spikes effectively. The company also faced challenges in deploying configuration changes, which required a minimum of 60 minutes and often involved going through their previous provider. This process was inefficient and limited the ability of Gannett's developers to make changes quickly and independently.

Cybrary, a growing community that brings together people, companies, and training to revolutionize the cyber security educational experience, was facing a significant challenge. Their legacy web application firewall (WAF) was failing to provide complete attack coverage and usability across its APIs and web properties. With a wide range of pages and training content to protect, Cybrary’s two-person infrastructure team was struggling with issues that their legacy WAF could not address. The legacy WAF was proving extremely difficult to configure and debug without investing significant time and resources. It also provided incomplete attack coverage and blocked valid requests, with no real-time visibility, alerting, or a functional dashboard to monitor activity over time. As security experts, Cybrary needed to maintain their brand identity and ensure their security practice was cutting-edge.

Spread Group, a global fashion and lifestyle provider, faced a significant challenge in maintaining its global scale and converting online clicks into physical products. The company, which operates three distinct brands, needed to weave delivery with security to ensure the smooth operation of its platform. With over 6.17 billion average monthly requests, finding a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to supercharge delivery was a top priority. Additionally, Spread Group needed a robust Web Application Firewall (WAF) that could work in harmony with its constantly evolving platform. The company had a good, internally developed security monitoring and observability infrastructure, but it was not viable long-term. A flexible WAF that could run in blocking mode was needed to provide more time to modernize vulnerable legacy components.

Storytel, a global leader in audiobooks, was faced with a significant challenge when developing their new homepage. The original homepage was built on an outdated tech stack, which was not conducive to the high-performing, optimized experience they aimed to provide their customers. The company wanted to leverage stale-while-revalidate cache control to ensure lightning-fast load times. However, during testing, they discovered that the page load times were over a second, which was unacceptable for a project of such high profile. The issue was traced back to their existing Content Delivery Network (CDN), which did not support the caching strategy they had designed. The CDN did not trigger the stale-while-revalidate process with every request, resulting in slow page loads. The vendor had no plans to change how this directive works, leaving Storytel in a precarious situation on the eve of a global rollout.