Defense.com achieves scalability and compliance with Civo's FlexCore

What was the problem?

Defense.com faced significant challenges in managing its infrastructure, particularly with regard to scalability, performance, and compliance. The company's traditional stack was struggling to keep up with the demands of processing 1.3 trillion messages per year from its top 200 customers. The need for high-performance, high-throughput processing, fast log search, and continuous uptime was paramount. Additionally, Defense.com required a solution that could meet data residency and sovereignty requirements for customers in regulated industries.

Before partnering with Civo, Defense.com was hosting its technology stack in a private data center on its own purchased hardware. The company mainly deployed virtual machines, alongside bare metal, for services that had more intense performance demands, such as its Security Information and Event Monitoring platform (SIEM). However, this approach was not scalable, and Defense.com needed a more modern way to manage its infrastructure.

How Civo helped

Defense.com evaluated many hyperscale providers, such as AWS, but repeatedly came across barriers to entry. The number of products and complexity was overwhelming, and the company needed guidance on its future technology choices.

CEO Oliver Pinson-Roxburgh said, “One of the hardest challenges was speaking to someone who understood the unique requirements that hosting Defense.com™ presented, with most hyperscale providers preferring to push their customers through consulting partners, it was just very hard to get a conversation started”.

Civo's FlexCore infrastructure was the perfect solution, providing a Kubernetes-based architecture and GPU capabilities that enabled Defense.com to:

• Process massive log streams and translate them into actionable insights
• Enrich data with security context and expose it to analysts
• Utilize AI to build runbooks and other tools to quickly ingest and make sense of new data
• Meet data residency and sovereignty requirements for customers in regulated industries

Civo's team worked closely with Defense.com's DevOps team to carry out a proof of concept, demonstrating the ease of using the Civo platform and the speed at which a 100% managed Kubernetes cluster could be launched.

Civo's FlexCore has been a game-changer for Defense.com, providing:

• Scalability and high-performance AI/ML capabilities
• Predictable pricing, eliminating the risk of surprise bills
• Real-time threat analysis and built-in security and compliance features
• The ability to scale up or down instantly as new customers sign up
• Improved productivity and developer velocity, thanks to Civo's rapid Kubernetes launch times

Defense.com's security teams ran very extensive tests against the Civo systems and applications to ensure there were no weaknesses. Pinson Roxburgh said, “Our security teams ran very extensive tests against the Civo systems and applications to ensure there were no weaknesses. The results were excellent, and it gave us great confidence in hosting customer data with Civo.”

Products and tools used

Defense.com™ takes advantage of a number of different Civo products and tooling. They are also big users of some third-party automation tools.

Flexcore

• Civo's Kubernetes-based infrastructure has enabled Defense.com to process massive log streams and translate them into actionable insights.
• By utilizing FlexCore, Defense.com has achieved the scalability and high-performance AI/ML capabilities required to support its growing customer base.

Private region

• Civo's Private Region has been used to host Defense.com's SIEM data in a highly scalable and secure environment.
• This has enabled Defense.com to meet data residency and sovereignty requirements for customers in regulated industries, while also providing industry-leading performance for SIEM event searches.

GPUs

• Civo's GPUs have enabled Defense.com to enrich log data with security context and expose it to analysts.
• The GPUs have also been used to accelerate AI/ML workloads, allowing Defense.com to build runbooks and other tools to quickly ingest and make sense of new data.

Kubernetes

• Defense.com has transitioned away from a single large environment hosting all applications and instead moved to Civo Kubernetes, where smaller clusters are assigned per application.
• This has helped reduce the scope for single-point-of-failure issues and improved developer productivity, thanks to Civo's rapid Kubernetes launch times.