July 06 2021

ZAG Launches Enhanced Website Security Solutions

Affordable enterprise-level security, whether ZAG hosts your website or not

When ZAG Interactive began offering managed hosting services over 10 years ago, the intention was to extend support for our core client base of financial institutions and offer layered hosting solutions catering to the unique compliance and security needs of highly regulated industries. As security threats – and available solutions to mitigate these threats -- rapidly evolve over time, ZAG has remained agile in our approach but consistent in our philosophy: to treat the security and availability of your marketing website as you would treat your online banking site. The result is an infrastructure team at ZAG that is laser-focused on creating and continuously improving our highly secure, redundant and intelligent hosting solutions for our clients. While no industry solution in today’s world can truly stop malicious threats from attacking, the goal is to mitigate threats before they cause harm, and ZAG is proud to now offer additional robust security solutions to meet the compliance needs for all of our clients, regardless of where they host their website.

Enterprise security solutions with discounted pricing, whether you host with ZAG or not

While ZAG continues to offer enterprise-level security services to our clients who elect to host their website with us as we always have, we are now offering several new security services to clients who chose to host elsewhere. Whether it be in your own AWS or Azure instance, an on-premise solution, or even when partnered with another provider, we can point our new cloud-based security solution to protect your website application.
 
Regardless of where or how your website is hosted, our new partnership with Cloudflare allows clients to harness enterprise-level security solutions and access these premier services at a discount from what it would cost to contract with Cloudflare directly. Security services that harness global intelligence can be extremely expensive when purchased for a single website, but through ZAG’s new managed security solution, our clients can protect their websites from malicious threats for a fraction of what it would cost to do this alone.
 
ZAG’s existing hosting clients will also benefit from our newly expanded Web Application Firewall at no additional cost as part of your current managed services contract, with the option to add other enhanced security options at a reduced cost from what it would cost to add these services directly through Cloudflare. In the summer of 2021, we will be rolling out these enhanced solutions to our primary hosting environments at Rackspace in addition to being able to offer it to our clients who host elsewhere.

While requesting a consultation with one of ZAG’s IT experts is always a recommended next step to learn how this solution will work and can benefit your organization, a brief summary of the services available through ZAG’s new Cloudflare partnership is outlined below.

Web Application Firewall (WAF): Block Threats Before They Reach Your Site

By harnessing the “immune system of the internet”, Cloudflare’s expanded and more intelligent WAF stops threats “at the edge” to keep your applications secure without compromising performance, accelerating good requests and mitigating bad ones, and managing your applications with integrity. The WAF also has enhanced geo-blocking capabilities to block bad actor nations from accessing the website based on each financial institution’s unique business requirements. This robust solution uses Cloudflare's global network to continually monitor, learn and adjust to new threats -- mitigating them before they breach your network and reach your website.

Advanced Bot Protection to Identify Bot Attacks

Automated attacks on website infrastructure have grown increasingly more sophisticated, and therefore the need for advanced bot protection is even more necessary to maintain website integrity. Early bot attacks were predictable in nature and therefore relatively easy to mitigate, but with increasing sophistication, malicious bots today are able to mimic human behavior making the simple mitigation rules of only a few years ago obsolete and ineffective. Additionally, the cost of bot mitigation after an attack can be a sizable expense, fueling the need to stop them before they cause harm. Through techniques like machine learning, threat intelligence, behavioral analysis, and fingerprinting, Cloudflare’s Advanced Bot Protection helps ensure your website can stand up to these increasingly dangerous threats.

Credential Stuffing Protection for Account Login Features

Bot-powered credential stuffing involves malicious attacks that attempt to take over a user account with the intention of conducting fraudulent transactions or stealing sensitive data. The bot hits logins repeatedly using a series of stolen credentials and other data in an attempt to hijack user accounts and compromise personal information. Cloudflare leverages advanced machine learning, AI and more to interrupt these bad actors and help preserve the integrity of your account data.  While your online banking vendor may offer a degree of protection, your marketing websites also include tethered login access for a more seamless user experience, so it’s beneficial to have this protection on your marketing website as well.

Screen Scraping Protection

Screen scraping is a malicious practice where bots are used to rapidly capture content and data published on your website with the intention of misusing that data in illegal and/or inappropriate ways. Cloudlfare's screen scraping protection leverages techniques such as rate limiting, which can analyze activity to determine acceptable human browsing and then attempts to limit malicious bot access to your site. This solution helps mitigate this risk and keeps your website content protected and available to its intended audiences.

Protecting Your Site is More Critical than Ever

ZAG’s enhanced security solution in partnership with Cloudflare can not only protect your website, but also build upon the trust our clients and their customers and members expect. For more information about bringing enterprise-level security to your digital presence, please reach out to your ZAG account manager, or contact us if you’re a new client.

 
 
  • Banks
  • Credit Unions
  • Security

posted by
Marah Boisoneau
Marah Boisoneau
Associate Director of Business Development

ZAG Interactive is a full-service digital agency in Glastonbury, CT, offering website design, development, marketing and digital strategy to clients nationwide. See current job openings.
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