Executive Summary
One of Africa’s largest digital banks, with over $26 billion in assets, aimed to revolutionize personalized banking services for its rapidly expanding customer base. Their strategic initiative, launching Africa’s first Virtual Banking Lounge, would allow high-value customers to connect with relationship managers through secure virtual banking. While this digital expansion presented greater convenience and reach, it also introduced significant cybersecurity challenges, particularly in protecting sensitive financial data. The bank needed an enterprisegrade security solution that would safeguard both customer information and digital transactions, while supporting seamless virtual interactions at scale.
Eclypses’ patented encryption on Amazon Web Services (AWS) ensured comprehensive data security for Large Banks rapidly expanding customer base enabling Large Bank to active their customer engagement and satisfaction goals as well as reach new Markets of populations lacking in-branch access. This aligns with its company’s mission to contribute to the economic development and financial integration of the continent.
Speeding Time-to-Value at Reduced Costs
Large Bank was able to implement and deploy Eclypses solution in under three hours speeding time-to-value for their 20M+ customers to access secure, virtual banking.
Large Bank also achieved operational savings by securing its virtual banking platform with Eclypses’ data protection solution. This enabled customers to confidently conduct digital transactions, allowing the bank to transition high-volume routine inquiries from physical branches to the secure virtual platform. This digital transformation optimized branch staffing, reduced operational costs, and expanded service capabilities, all while preserving a seamless customer experience. Large Bank experienced cost-savings of 50% on previously redundant third-party VPNs, appliances, and associated licensing costs.
It also leveraged AWS Marketplace Private Offer for customized pricing, speed, and simplicity of procurement.
Software as a Dye Pack
While there is not a “Software as a Dye Pack” category for AWS partners, it perfectly describes Eclypses’ approach. The bank’s Chief Information Security Officer noted, “Eclypses acts like a dye-pack, rendering anything a virtual attacker might steal completely useless.”
Traditional protocols often leave data exposed in plaintext between servers and endpoints during runtime. Eclypses solves this issue by encrypting at the application layer (Layer 7) and protecting payloads with unique, one-time-use random strings of cryptographic values. Even if intercepted, these values are meaningless. Eclypses uses the Kyber algorithm, validated by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for post-quantum cryptography (PQC), ensuring future-proof, quantum-resistant security with its FIPS 140-3 certification.
Large Bank runs on Amazon Elastic Container Services (ECS) and Eclypses sits outside their applications as a Proxy between endpoints, encrypting each payload with single-one-time-use crytographic values that cannot be decoded even if intercepted.
In addition to Eclypses, Large Bank also uses many AWS Native Services to enhance their security posture. Including ElastiCache for caching MTE state data and reducing latency. Secrets Manager, to secure environment and configuration variables such as API keys and database credentials. And finally, CloudWatch, for real-time insights into application performance and security events.
Focus on Innovation
By securing its digital channels with Eclypses, the bank has been able to reach underserved customers through its virtual platform. This security foundation has allowed the bank to focus on delivering personalized digital experiences and creating new interactive services, driving market expansion while maintaining robust data protection.
“We’re pleased to be reaching new markets of customers who previously had no access to physical branches,” said a bank representative.
The introduction of the digital lounge has also increased customer engagement, with a 33% improvement compared to previous surveys. The bank can now quickly respond to additional feature requests, further enhancing the end-user experience of valued customers.
Better Together
By deploying Eclypses on AWS, the bank strengthened its digital security while boosting customer engagement through the virtual banking platform. The Eclypses solution is deployed on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) for management of containerized applications and integrates seamlessly with Amazon Elastic Load Balancer for auto-scaling, Amazon ElastiCache for improved performance and CloudWatch for application performance monitoring.
The bank reports that the business value from implementing Eclypses significantly outweighs the marginal increase in AWS infrastructure costs, delivering a strong return on their security investment.
Challenges
- Tight deadline for launching the new Virtual Banking Lounge.
- Need to boost customer engagement with bank representatives.
- Increasing volume of sensitive customer data at risk of breach.
Solutions
- Implemented Eclypses for comprehensive data security in transit and at the edge.
- No need for additional headcount or resources.
- Maintained a seamless end-user experience without interruptions.
Results
- Significant increase in customer engagement rates.
- Higher customer satisfaction levels.
- Set a new standard for secure digital banking data in Africa.
About the Partner
Eclypses, is an APN-differentiated software partner and AWS Container and Security Competency partner. Revolutionizing data security in transit and at the edge. Its containerized security and non-patterned encryption ensure intercepted data remains useless to attackers. Securing tokens, credentials, and sensitive data.
Where traditional protocols are imperfect (leaving data exposed in plaintext during runtime) Eclypses encrypts at the application layer (Layer 7), using unique, one-time-use cryptographic values. Seamlessly integrating with AWS infrastructure and native services and delivering end-to-end protection without disrupting workflows or user experiences.
Following quantum-resistant Crystals-Kyber algorithm encryption. Eclypses is FIPS 140-3 validated. Futureproofing enterprise-grade security for application data, APIs, access management, and cloud migration to AWS.
About the Customer
Africa’s Largest Digital Bank provides commercial, corporate, and investment banking to over 6.5 million valued customers. Their mission is to contribute to the economic development and financial integration of the continent.
