Mirae Asset Sharekhan Gains Efficient Security with F5
Founded in 1995, Sharekhan was among the first brokers to introduce online trading in India. Now operating as Mirae Asset Sharekhan, the company offers a comprehensive suite of trading and investment solutions. With its expanding digital footprint and increasing operational demands, the organization sought to modernize its IT infrastructure. The F5 application-centric approach enabled streamlined operations, enhanced security, and scalable growth.
Business Challenge
As one of India's leading stockbrokers, Mirae Asset Sharekhan serves over 31 lakh (hundred thousand) clients through more than 120 branches and more than 4,400 business partners. Its trading and investment solutions include equities, futures and options, portfolio management services, research, mutual funds, and investor education. The integration of Mirae Asset’s global expertise with Sharekhan strong domestic market presence has created a robust financial services platform catering to a diverse clientele.
The company’s operations rely on more than 75 critical applications hosted in an on-premises environment. These applications facilitate essential business functions such as trading, customer engagement, and operational management. However, reliance on volume-based licensing from the company’s previous security provider proved unsustainable, with escalating costs impeding scalability.
Under the leadership of Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Amit Jaokar, Mirae Asset Sharekhan conducted an in-depth evaluation of its web application firewall (WAF) protection and identified key shortcomings. These included ineffective WAF protection modes, partial security coverage, and poor vendor responsiveness. Additionally, inadequate security measures and a lack of strategic planning for future scalability were highlighted as major concerns.
Limited application-level visibility further complicated security management, making it difficult to analyse traffic patterns, detect anomalies, and address inefficiencies. The growing complexity of the company’s legacy infrastructure also hindered application deployments, leading to prolonged delays. As trading volumes surged, these challenges posed significant risks to business continuity and customer satisfaction. To overcome these hurdles, the company sought a solution that could enhance security, reduce costs, and improve operational agility while ensuring regulatory compliance.
Solutions
To address these challenges, Mirae Asset Sharekhan strategically transitioned to F5 Distributed Cloud WAF. This solution, part of the Distributed Cloud Services family, offers SaaS-based security, networking, and application management across multi-cloud, on-premises, and edge environments. The objective was to enhance and standardize security measures, simplify management, and improve visibility while establishing a foundation for future API protection—an increasingly critical component of digital business.
The implementation commenced with a proof of concept (PoC), during which F5 demonstrated the platform’s advanced capabilities, including:
- Enhanced visibility through comprehensive dashboards offering granular insights into traffic patterns and policy effectiveness.
- A flexible architecture supporting hybrid environments and enabling seamless delivery of both on-premises and cloud-based applications.
- Robust security with advanced API protection and customizable policies to counter evolving threats.
The PoC also demonstrated the ease of deployment of the Distributed Cloud Platform, which enables Mirae Asset Sharekhan to consolidate management of more than 75 applications onto a unified platform with simplified load balancing requirements. This feature of Distributed Cloud Services significantly reduces costs while ensuring efficient policy management and enhanced scalability.
The implementation was seamless, rapid, and achieved with minimal downtime. Meticulous pre-implementation planning, continuous monitoring, and the solution’s flexibility ensured that dozens of applications could be onboarded and fully protected with remarkable ease and speed compared to other WAF alternatives. Comprehensive protection of the company’s entire application portfolio, using the solution’s full blocking mode, was accomplished in fewer than 75 days. This was delivered with complete operational transparency and a seamless experience for millions of customers.
Results
Quickly block 99.9% of cyberthreats
With F5 Distributed Cloud WAF, Mirae Asset Sharekhan rapidly fortified its security posture, safeguarding applications from evolving threats while ensuring seamless user experiences. This robust protection was achieved without disrupting legitimate traffic or causing downtime during or after deployment.
Moreover, intelligent traffic management enhances application performance, while advanced policy features empower the company to proactively address vulnerabilities, fostering a resilient digital ecosystem. The platform also strengthens API security, offering greater control and visibility. Jaokar says, “F5 Distributed Cloud WAF delivers unparalleled visibility and security for our applications, paving the way for scalable growth and operational excellence.”
Improve operational efficiency and reduce costs
By mitigating cyberthreats and financial fraud, the solution has substantially lowered operational costs. The platform provides native load balancing for every application, consolidating infrastructure and improving performance. This empowers teams to focus on strategic initiatives rather than routine maintenance.
Additionally, the per-application licensing model of Distributed Cloud Services provides a cost-effective security framework that could be seamlessly integrated into the company's existing architecture. This approach replaced an uneconomical WAF solution constrained by bandwidth limitations, freeing Mirae Asset Sharekhan from a complex mix of variable and fixed costs per application.
With policy sharing across hardware and SaaS platforms, intuitive dashboards for real-time insights, and simplified security integration, Mirae Asset Sharekhan has significantly strengthened its security posture.
Gain scalability to support business growth
The highly scalable Distributed Cloud Services architecture also supports future growth without incurring additional overhead, ensuring business continuity and safeguarding profitability.
Looking ahead, Mirae Asset Sharekhan is exploring further collaborations with F5 to continue enhancing its security infrastructure. The company plans to integrate additional F5 solutions to support its growing digital ecosystem and strengthen its cybersecurity posture against emerging threats.
- Quickly block 99.9% of cyberthreats
- Avoid downtime during and after deployment
- Reduce operational costs
- Improve application performance
- Gain scalability to support business growth
- Unsustainable costs
- Limited visibility
- Inadequate protection amid increasing complexity
- Slow deployments
- Regulatory compliance