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"Our primary goal was to have a perimeter solution in place because of the current landscape of the [banking] industry [in Philippines]. We saw the value Akamai brings to us in terms of the intelligence and performance of the solution, especially on security, DDoS mitigation and content delivery."
Archieval Tolentino, Chief Security Officer, LANDBANK
The Situation
LANDBANK, the largest government-owned bank in the Philippines, is a full-service commercial bank evolved from its initial role as the financing arm of the agrarian reform. Today, LANDBANK is the largest credit institution in the rural areas. Its credit delivery system is able to penetrate a substantial percentage of the country’s total number of municipalities. As of April 2017, the bank has 372 branches and 1,647 ATMs nationwide.
As part of its continuous innovative expansion strategy to better serve its customers and reach unbanked Filipinos with services such as eBanking solutions, LANDBANK recognized the importance of securing its online applications such as ePayment and online remittances services while improving the customer experience.
The Challenge
Upon noticing the upward trend in DDoS attacks and data breaches in the Philippines and globally, LANDBANK was determined to be proactive against any potential threats. As Archieval Tolentino, Chief Security Officer of LANDBANK, puts it, “We understood that attacks are on the rise and before something serious happened, we wanted to put the solutions in place — secure the bank before any actual emergency arises and be ready in case we do in fact have to respond to a situation.”
The Goals
- Secure the bank from DDoS, DNS, and application attacks. The bank wanted to pre-emptively take measures to protect itself against any possible threats in the future.
- Simplify the digital transformation journey. The bank needed a strategic partner to make the move to digital as effortless and secure as possible.
- Gain ability to respond during attack. The bank needed to have the means to mitigate and respond effectively to attacks.
Why Akamai?
Choosing a trusted partner
One of LANDBANK’s criteria was to have a highly responsible and reliable team, which led them to consult PLDT, a longtime partner of its digital transformation journey. In turn, PLDT recommended Akamai’s suite of security solutions for its sheer scale within and beyond the Philippines, plus a proven track record of defending against large-scale and complex attacks for financial services organizations. Beyond consultation, PLDT provided a localized onboarding process.
Archieval adds, “We currently have 11 websites that are customer facing, and we can already see great performance on all, especially in terms of content delivery network.”
Fast deployment and offload
Akamai’s extensive coverage across the Philippines and ease of deployment saved LANDBANK an estimated five months of deployment time compared to a traditional hardware approach. Akamai’s always-on protection immediately provided the scalability and capabilities required to defend large DDoS attacks as well as attacks against web applications and direct-to-origin attacks. Another benefit was a total average origin offload of 87.5%.
Improved security posture
Part of the solutions for LANDBANK included Security Optimization Assistance where Akamai blocked 100% of incoming malicious traffic, which, as Archieval puts it, “significantly offloads the work for the internal security devices.” Since the malicious traffic never really makes it through the first line of defense, the internal security devices have a lot less to deal with. Akamai also provided data and analytics, offering visibility into attacks and aiding in the consistent fine-tuning of WAF rules to stay up to date.
About LANDBANK
Land Bank of the Philippines (LANDBANK) is a government financial institution that strikes a balance in fulfilling its social mandate of promoting countryside development while remaining financially viable.
This dual function makes LANDBANK unique. The profits derived from its commercial banking operations are used to finance the Bank’s developmental programs and initiatives.
Over the years, LANDBANK has successfully managed this tough balancing act as evidenced by the continued expansion of its loan portfolio in favor of its priority sectors: the farmers and fisherfolk, small and medium enterprises and microenterprises, livelihood loans and agribusiness, agri-infrastructure and other agri- and environment-related projects, socialized housing, schools, and hospitals.
LANDBANK also ranks among the top five commercial banks in the country in terms of deposits, assets, loans, and capital.
From its initial role as the financing arm of the agrarian reform, LANDBANK has evolved into a full-service commercial bank. But the essence of its existence has not changed at all — to make the countryside continuously throb with life.