Wall Street Docs (WSD) is a renowned provider of automation solutions for complex legal and financial documentation. As part of their ongoing digital transformation, they required an enterprise-class cloud landing zone for a seamless migration of their on-premise services to a cloud environment. WSD sought Cloud Bridge's expertise to design and build a SaaS solution with a primary focus on modernisation and reduction of operational costs.
The Challenge:
WSD's legacy infrastructure was characterised by on-premise datacentres that were becoming increasingly costly and lacked the agility required to meet their rapidly evolving business needs. Their existing infrastructure lacked centralised management of security and governance guardrails, audit standards compliance, and network connectivity. Additionally, the management of their existing user access control was fragmented without a unified SSO authentication platform.
Their primary challenge was to move multiple key services to an AWS environment in a manner that provided consolidated network connectivity, centralised management, and compliance with audit standards like CIS, PCI, etc. The transition also needed to ensure that anomaly detection and IDS/IPS services were in place to enhance their security posture.
Solution
To address these challenges, Cloud Bridge designed an enterprise-class cloud landing zone using AWS Control Tower for automated AWS account creation and management of multi-account AWS environments.
Threat detection and centralised management for security and compliance was enabled using AWS' native services such as AWS GuardDuty, SecurityHub whilst unified single sign-on was setup by integrating the AWS Single Sign-On (SSO) service with Microsoft Azure AD and used for centralised access control.
AWS Transit Gateway and Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) were utilised to provide consolidated network connectivity and centralised management. This setup ensured seamless network routing between their AWS accounts and on-premise networks over a VPN connection. Additionally, AWS's Backup service was set up for centralised backup, while EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) was used for containerised application management.
The Benefits
The enterprise-class cloud landing zone designed and built successfully migrated WSD's key services from on-premise data centres to the cloud environment, bringing about several notable benefits:
Cost Efficiency: The cloud-based solution significantly reduced the costs associated with maintaining on-premise data centres. This was achieved through a combination of factors, including reduced hardware and energy costs, as well as decreased software licensing expenses. Additionally, the cloud-based solution allowed for more efficient use of resources, such as increased flexibility in scaling up or down capacity based on demand. Furthermore, by moving to a cloud-based model, the company was able to free up valuable physical space in its facilities, which could be repurposed for other needs. Overall, the adoption of a cloud-based solution not only resulted in significant cost savings but also provided a number of other benefits that improved the company's operations and competitiveness.
Enhanced Security: WSD places a strong emphasis on security, so CB had to implement various measures to safeguard its systems. A key strategy employed by CB is a centralised approach to managing security and governance guardrails. This enables streamlined management and oversight of security measures across the organisation, ensuring that all systems are optimally configured and up-to-date.
To further enhance security, CB has implemented a range of tools and services, including anomaly detection and IDS/IPS services. These tools help identify potential security threats, allowing for rapid response to any incidents. Overall, these measures have greatly enhanced WSD's security posture, ensuring the safety and integrity of its systems and data.
Compliance: The solution ensured WSD was compliant with various audit standards such as the Centre for Internet Security (CIS) benchmarks.
Operational Efficiency: Centralised user access control and unified SSO authentication platform streamlined operations, reduced complexities, and improved productivity.
Scalability and Agility: The cloud solution provided WSD with the agility to quickly adapt to changing business needs and scale its infrastructure as required.
Conclusion:
This transformation has successfully positioned WSD to better meet the demands of a changing consumer and technology landscape while increasing agility and reducing costs. As a result, WSD is now equipped with a robust, secure, and flexible infrastructure that supports its growth and evolution in the competitive financial technology sector.
