Plus500 protects millions of online trades with a compliant multicloud solution

Keeping everything secure

The cybersecurity requirements of a data heavyand strictly regulated platformlike Plus500’s are considerable andconstantly adapting.

As operations have expanded and grown more complex, the challenges of keeping everything online and operational have also changed.

“We see thousands of attacks every day,” explained Mashaal. “Not all of these are sophisticated, not many of them actually threaten us, but of course, these days there are constantly attempts on our network.”

In response to these threats, Plus500 deploys a suite of defenses with Rackspace Managed Security (RMS) at its core.

“Our security is multi-layered,” said Mashaal. “The Rackspace Technology part of our defenses is the last mile — the traffic it sees has already been scrubbed by firewalls and means that if something triggers and requires action from RMS, it is almost certainly real and malicious.

“RMS is an essential and powerful line of defense — there is no need to bother it with minor issues, it is the serious threats that we cannot otherwise stop that we know we can rely on it for.”

This security integration dates back to 2018 and has continued to evolve since then.

“When GDPR requirements launched, it was a good time for us to be early adopters of RMS,” said Mashaal. “It helps me a lot with compliance and makes it easier and more accurate for our teams to run security.

“We have tailored it to our needs and refined it, reducing the number of false positives the team then hunts for — too many of them and you risk a ‘boy who cried wolf’ scenario of dismissing a real threat as one that looks similar to a previous false one.”

The transition to a multicloud environment has also brought new challenges to the cybersecurity requirements. Plus500 is now in the process of upgrading to the latest version of the RMS Proactive Detection and Response (PDR) offering, with increased security and management capabilities supported by the implementation of Armor and Crowdstrike tooling.

“Multicloud adds a lot of complexities,” said Mashaal. “Our networks are all connected, which means you can go all the way from logging on to Google Cloud right through to our core servers. It’s great, and how multicloud needs to work, but of course it adds to the vulnerability as you lose visibility of that journey and of who is doing what.”

“A key next step for us is working with Rackspace Technology to improve this. This is where Armor, which is part of the new PDR offering, will help as it should catch everything — it enhances our existing security portfolio and will seamlessly run across Google Cloud and our own servers, but limit our vulnerability.”

The end goal is for Rackspace Technology to provide Plus500 with a single pane security offering across all of its operations, both public and private cloud, and make it as easy as possible to have total visibility across all environments.

Alongside these specifics, it is the expertise and the breadth of knowledge Rackspace Technology can bring that is the most valuable to Plus500 in its security operations.

“Some organizations may consider building their own Security Operations Centre (SOC),” explained Mashaal. “If you do it yourselves, you can only build it based on what you see yourselves — you don’t get the shared knowledge of what other companies are seeing, what different kinds of threat there are. That therefore adds to the risk, and you cannot afford that. Cybersecurity is evolving all the time, you have to stay in front of it wherever possible. This is why we use the Rackspace Technology SOC.”

As Plus500 continues to expand globally, it can scale confidently with long-term partner Rackspace Technology managing its multicloud environment and providing strategic direction. Plus500 looks forward to building on the extensive capabilities of Google Cloud Platform and all new developments will be wrapped in Rackspace Technology security and compliance services.