As cybercrime continues to threaten global institutions, Canada’s Servus Credit Union relies on its longtime partnership with F5 to help it secure member finances. The recent addition of F5 Distributed Cloud Bot Defense helps defeat automated DDoS attacks, preventing service degradations as the credit union grows.
Cooperative banking got its start in Alberta in 1938 with the incorporation of an Edmonton credit union that became the foundation for today’s Servus Credit Union. For nearly 100 years, Servus Credit Union has provided a full range of financial services to its more than 600,000 members across Alberta. With branches in over 80 communities, 24/7 digital and mobile banking, and access to thousands of no-fee ATMs, it offers members both local connection and everyday convenience.
Rising global cybercrime includes the threat of automated DDoS attacks, which can cause traffic surges and performance degradation of public-facing applications. To prevent such impacts, Servus deployed F5 Distributed Cloud Bot Defense.
“We knew we could trust F5 to help us.”
Michael Alguire, Head of Cybersecurity, Servus Credit Union
“We knew we could trust F5 to help us,”says Michael Alguire, Head of Cybersecurity for Servus Credit Union. The credit union already relied on F5 BIG-IP products to help deliver and secure customer-facing web and mobile apps, and the addition of the bot mitigation solution was a logical next step.
“F5 swiftly delivered a precise solution, streamlining processes to minimize risk and bringing in the right expertise exactly when needed,” says Gary Leung, Information Security Risk Lead for Servus.
Servus deployed the solution as a fully managed service, which frees the credit union’s IT team to focus on existing priorities while retaining self-service policy configuration as needed. Licensing through the F5 Flex Consumption Program (FCP) preserves the credit union’s ability to adapt or scale into the future.
Servus Security Architect Harish Devanathan notes that once the solution was in place, “The F5 mitigation prevents automated attacks from reaching the credit union’s systems or degrading app performance and availability.”
“The great relationship we had with F5 and the right F5 technologies helped us quickly strengthen our security posture,” says Alguire.
With Distributed Cloud Bot Defense in place, Devanathan says, “Once we had that base technology set up, we’ve used it as our ‘move forward’ strategy. Any applications facing the Internet should adopt the same features and DDoS protections that came out-of-the-box from F5 BIG-IP products and Distributed Cloud Bot Defense. That’s become a mandatory requirement.”
“F5 Distributed Cloud Bot Defense finds anomalies based on adaptive detection, and that has really been useful.”
• Harish Devanathan, Security Architect, Servus Credit Union
The Servus team appreciates the adaptive security of the F5 solution.
“Our traffic changes almost every single day,” says Devanathan. “Fraudsters are trying to identify new ways of attacking our online web and mobile applications. F5 Distributed Cloud Bot Defense finds anomalies based on adaptive detection, and that has really been useful.”
Servus continues to work closely with F5 on the mobile app signature data needed to investigate anomalies and stay ahead of potential threats.
Marek Wazny, Director of Security Architecture and Assurance for Servus, says, “We’ve got a history and context with F5 that we really appreciate, and we feel good working with them.”
“F5 is like a close friend, and we know F5 always has our back.”
John Lemko, Director of Security Operations, Servus Credit Union
The accessibility of F5 experts is a particular benefit. Alguire notes that many vendors are less responsive. “I’ve never had that problem with F5,” he says. “Whether it’s a billing question or information on the product itself, F5 has always been accessible to me to get the information I need.”
John Lemko, Director of Security Operations, agrees, “On the operations side, F5 is like a close friend, and we know F5 always has our back.”
Today, the Servus IT team is busy migrating to new platforms, hardware, and data centers; integrating facilities and technologies brought onboard through a recent merger; and, of course, exploring use of machine learning and AI.
“Ensuring that we leverage these tools in a manner that is both safe and secure, while keeping sensitive data protected, is critical to our strategy for sustainable growth,” notes Devanathan.
