Safeguarding sensitive data and ensuring optimal application performance are top priorities for many financial services enterprises, including a global financial transaction processor that relies on NetScaler to do exactly that.
Like many NetScaler customers, this U.S.-based company in the financial services sector uses Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (CVAD) in conjunction with NetScaler to provide its internal users with secure access to business-critical applications. The company’s users benefit from a seamless application experience thanks to NetScaler’s low latency.
Additionally, the company’s IT team benefits from the deep insights that NetScaler surfaces to pinpoint issues arising from both applications and the network.
Protects sensitive data
In the finance industry, data security is non-negotiable. For this global financial transaction processor, the primary objective is to secure sensitive financial transactions and maintain the integrity and confidentiality of the data.
The company operates in a highly regulated space where breaches could not only result in financial loss for its clients, but also in severe legal repercussions for the company.
“It’s a risk not to use NetScaler for application security.”
Ensures optimal application performance
Enterprises in the financial sector must often transact in real time, so milliseconds matter when it comes to application performance.
“Latency and performance bottlenecks can disrupt financial transactions,” says the company’s infrastructure architect. “We make sure the financial market stays stable by ensuring that transactions occur without disruption — transactions proceeding the way they should is something we take great pride in.”
Gains real-time visibility to prevent fraudulent activity
The company’s infrastructure architect also emphasizes that knowing what’s happening within the network is crucial: “Having real-time visibility into network traffic and user activities is essential for compliance, performance, and troubleshooting.”
The IT team places a premium on the ability to quickly resolve issues with its applications so that they are always available.
“Because NetScaler provides complete visibility into each application, we can accelerate issue resolution and maintain efficient operations,” says the company’s infrastructure architect.
The IT team especially benefits from HDX Insights, a NetScaler feature that provides deep insights into traffic flows for Citrix environments and one that it uses daily.
The infrastructure architect says that “we’ve taken the initiative to train our support team to use HDX Insights feature, resulting in significant time savings to resolve problems.”
More broadly, the IT team uses NetScaler’s monitoring and analytics capabilities to gain granular visibility into the activities of its application users, which includes monitoring bandwidth allocation and identifying the geographic regions of user session connections.
Thanks to the granular and comprehensive insights that NetScaler provides, the IT team can quickly detect and thwart fraudulent activities, including impossible travel. Impossible travel is a term that describes a user’s attempt to log in from a new location that, considering the time elapsed since the user’s last login, would have been physically impossible for the user to reach.
“In one noteworthy instance, we successfully identified a case of impossible travel and thwarted fraudulent users attempting to gain access from Russia,” the infrastructure architect reports.
In addition to security insights, NetScaler provides insights that are invaluable for monitoring the throughput allocation of NetScaler application delivery controllers (ADCs). As a result, the IT team can proactively scale ADC capacity in accordance with increasing application demand to ensure a seamless application experience for the company’s workforce.
Efficiently manages SSL certificates
The global financial transaction processor requires a streamlined approach to managing SSL certificates to reduce the risk of expired certificates’ impacting its operations. NetScaler ensures that the company’s SSL certificates are always properly configured and current — a crucial step for preventing security breaches.
NetScaler’s SSL Management feature automates SSL certificate tasks, including installation, updates, and deletion. NetScaler also provides automated reporting that the IT team uses to proactively track and address unused and expiring certificates.
The NetScaler SSL Management feature not only streamlines operations but also ensures the strongest SSL protection for all web applications. By using NetScaler to configure automated policies for managing its SSL certificates, the company achieved a Qualys Labs A+ rating for its SSL configuration.
The result: NetScaler ensures a highly secure and performant Citrix environment for this financial services company
By using NetScaler to front end its Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (CVAD) deployment, this global financial transaction processor protects its clients’ financial data and ensures an optimal application experience for its internal users:
- Comprehensive real-time visibility and granular insights help the IT team to quickly troubleshoot issues and pinpoint whether they lie in the applications or the network
- NetScaler’s low latency and ability to seamlessly scale the company’s Citrix environment with application demand ensures an optimal experience for application users
- Efficient SSL certificate management capabilities makes it easy for the IT team to know when certificates will expire and to take proactive steps to ensure that the certificates are up to date to provide a crucial layer of protection
To learn how you can strengthen your security posture with NetScaler and achieve an A+ grade from Qualys Labs, get step-by-step instructions on networking SSL/TLS best practices.