Case Studies: Haventec
About Haventec
Haventec is an Australian cyber security software company with a patented disruptive technology platform that delivers innovative solutions for user identity, device identity and sensitive information management. Haventec eliminates organisations’ exposure to liability, reduces their risk and enables them to deliver highly secure frictionless user experiences to their customers.
“Haventec’s partnership with Fastlane gives it access to experienced technicians and advisors who support the cyber security company’s engineers in their day-to-day work. Haventec is building a reputation for its innovative and user-friendly inventions, including a suite of decentralised authentication, transaction and network security products”
Summary
Haventec’s innovative cyber security technology platform reduces risks for organisations that handle sensitive data such as user ID and authentication, financial transactions and network access management.
Haventec and its solution integration partner Fastlane use AWS to manage virtual machines (EC2), load balancing, virtual private clouds, databases (RDS) and static storage of websites (S3). Fastlane also runs advanced applications on AWS to conduct product resilience tests.
The challenge
Haventec has been a cloud-connected business since it was launched in November 2014 by a software inventor in Byron Bay (northern NSW, Australia) and a Sydney-based technology entrepreneur. As the team grew to include engineers, creative and business management staff in several Australian states and territories it made sense to connect colleagues working across multiple locations with cloud-based communications and collaborative tools.
“We’ve always used cloud services because it’s just easier to stay up to date with what everyone is working on,”explains Naveen Nati, chief engineer at Haventec. “Initially we had a basic set of tools for email, messaging,
documents and databases but very quickly it was obvious we needed to upgrade. We knew we needed more reliable infrastructure for our code databases, but also for fast onboarding of new technicians.”
While many technology startups are certainly comfortable with online workspaces, when CEO Robert Morrish joined in 2015 the business was gearing up to produce its first patented products. Morrish wanted a business-grade technology infrastructure that was secure and offered optimal uptime and round the clock tech support.
Having come from the giant Macquarie Group of financial businesses to a startup seeking investors he was also keen to have access to best-in-class technologies at a good price.
“Haventec’s demand for computing power, storage and applications fluctuates for each production cycle so we needed something that would deliver maximum benefits during peak demands, without the wasted maintenance and management costs associated with machines sitting idle,” he reports. “We’ve always been nimble. Nothing can slow us down.”
Neti agreed with Morrish an upgrade was essential.
“The engineers need infrastructure that is reliable, secure, robust and can be quickly configured – everything should just work,” he says.
So Haventec approached solution integration partner Fastlane Solutions to set up and manage new technology infrastructure, including Amazon Web Services, that would scale to meet its growing team’s needs and offer on
demand provisioning services for its customers.
“Fastlane started by providing expertise in choosing and configuring AWS services to meet our growing needs. Initially that meant setting up all our systems, establishing security rules and virtual networking best practices. Ongoing, Fastlane helps us onboard new products into our production pipeline, advises us on software architecture decisions (best practice and scalability), then helps implement them.”
The fastlane solution
Haventec’s partnership with Fastlane gives it access to experienced technicians and advisors who support the cyber security company’s engineers in their day-to-day work. Haventec is building a reputation for its
innovative and user-friendly inventions, including a suite of decentralised authentication, transaction and network security products.
Morrish notes one of the first ways Fastlane helped Haventec’s engineers was to free them up from systems management so they can focus on product development and user experience.
“Getting Fastlane on as a partner for IT support and provisioning has helped us gain momentum,” he says. “Fastlane gives us valuable advice on choosing cost-effective technologies and services, as well as ongoing support as we scale up.”
“Fastlane started by providing expertise in choosing and configuring AWS services to meet our growing needs,” adds Neti. “Initially that meant setting up all our systems, establishing security rules and virtual networking
best practices. Ongoing, Fastlane helps us onboard new products into our production pipeline, advises us on software architecture decisions (best practice and scalability), then helps implement them.
As cost control is so important for a young tech startup, CEO Robert Morrish is particularly pleased with.
Fastlane’s advice and management for scalable solutions:
“Fastlane helps Haventec choose and configure the services it needs to perform at each stage, ensuring we can scale up and down according to our needs on any given day.”
John Kelaita, product owner of Haventec Sanctum, explains that Fastlane’s contribution to his team includes a combination of technology and budget-management advice.
“We planned an internal AWS platform management and monitoring tool to report effectively on billing and usage,” he says. “We also have support for resilience and performance testing in AWS across different configurations to run our services for the lowest cost.”
Automated load testing of each product, which simulates real users’ behaviour such as peak use and system overload, is vital says Kelaita because “we must prove resilience to gain our customers’ trust in our products.”
Fastlane’s technologists work alongside each product team analyzing source code to suggest changes that will improve performance and allow for higher numbers of transactions per second.
Morrish says the comprehensive reports on performances of various AWS configurations help Haventec decide which server setup will produce the best results at the lowest running costs.
“We planned an internal AWS platform management and monitoring tool to report effectively on billing and usage. We also have support for resilience and performance testing in AWS across different configurations to run our services for the lowest cost”
Why amazon web services
Haventec relies on multiple technologies from Amazon Web Services every day as it develops and rolls out its cyber security products across Australia, the USA and Asia.
Route 53 is used to manage and configure Domain Name Services for all machines in every location: “Route 53 allows for fast and dynamic configuration of production server URLs which is automated in the build process using APIs,” says Neti.
Amazon SES gives developers fast and reliable access to their correspondence among team members and with partners and customers; while Virtual Machines empower engineers to quickly gather their own work tools.
“Our engineers are also using Virtual Machines to provision new machines to run production servers automatically for end-to-end testing of products,” adds Neti. “A major benefit of cloud services from AWS is that we can quickly expand into new territories. AWS allows Haventec to stand up production servers close to a client’s particular geographical location to reduce latency times.”
The benefits
Choosing AWS for all of its cloud services gives Haventec the scalability, cost control and business-grade technologies it needs to support its growth. As a technology startup it expects high performance services on demand; as a cyber security company it makes sense not to compromise on robust security.
“We can now provision new machines within minutes,” says Neti. “We get quality applications and other services on tap, and a wide variety of images available allowing choice of operating systems – everything is geared to high performance and high security.”
Morrish says the scalability of AWS is ideal for Haventec’s global aspirations – and the company’s financial backers are pleased to see AWS prove its worth, while delivering on the promise of cost control at every stage.
“We want to lead the next generation in cyber security,” Morrish states, “It’s our mission to protect organisations from data breaches and eliminate exposure to liability. It’s also important we help simplify our customers’ security operations while reducing costs, so it’s very useful having Fastlane and AWS help us achieve our ambitions.”
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