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Cybersecurity Company
CybersecurityA digital evidence management company optimized and deployed its digital evidence management system for a highly scalable and secure solution.
About Cybersecurity Company
Our partner company is a leading provider of global advisory and technology services, leveraging unparalleled expertise and cutting-edge technology to assist clients in overcoming their most intricate challenges and shaping the future.
With a focus on enabling ambitious projects, they bring together a diverse team of business analysts, policy specialists, technologists, researchers, digital strategists, social scientists, and creatives. Their work centres around driving engagement, facilitating digital transformation and modernizing IT systems.
Their latest venture involves the creation of a secure digital evidence management product for US federal agencies, with the goal of enabling large-scale initiatives and empowering their clients to achieve their goals.
The Challenge
Their prime goal was to create and implement an evidence management system that is highly secure, while also simplifying the challenges associated with uploading documents, photos, and videos.
Our Goals
- Simplify workflow and accelerate evidence collection through digital transformation techniques.
- Utilize a serverless strategy to save costs and developer time while ensuring maximal security for federal clients.
- Revamp the current AWS infrastructure and integrate new features to onboard a larger customer base and scale system.
- Develop a secure evidence management system with the ability to share files through a single link via email or mobile app.
- Eliminate the need for physical media such as CDs and DVDs to streamline evidence sharing and disposal processes.
Impact
Enhanced Stability and Availability
The organization experienced reduced availability due to sluggish web services caused by unexpected surges in traffic. To address this, AntStack employed an Application Load Balancer (ALB) to distribute network load in the public cloud. This improved both stability and availability. With this approach, we prevented failure caused by overloading a specific resource, ensuring quick and accurate processing of user requests and improving overall app responsiveness.
Horizontal Scaling with AWS Lambda
AntStack implemented horizontal scaling with AWS Lambda for image uploads, which replaced the previous probabilistic process. Using Lambda, the serverless solution for creating image thumbnails resulted in cost savings, as there was no need for an additional Amazon EC2 CPU that would often remain idle. The Lambda solution proved much cost-effective, costing next to nothing per processed image.
Streamlined Workflows and Faster Information Processing
Previously, the organization was expending significant time completing the life cycle of evidence collection. AntStack simplified the workflow by enabling mobile device uploads and web application sharing, eliminating physical transfers of evidence files. The files are now accessible to office personnel and can be shared with other stakeholders via email. The whole process became faster and seamless, eliminating the need for downloads. Tracking digital evidence became much easier, including monitoring modifications, views, downloads, and deletions by users.
Secure Video Streaming with HLS
AntStack overcame previous audio and video streaming challenges by implementing a secure CloudFront Distribution for HLS, providing low latency and high transfer speeds. By leveraging Amazon CloudFront’s fast CDN service, data was delivered globally, ensuring uninterrupted access and high quality resolution for end-users.
Cost effective Image Processing
Prior to implementation, heavy image uploads from smartphone cameras posed a challenge, as each image required processing into multiple variations for web and mobile display, including thumbnails and previews. Concurrent uploads created server wrecks and limited scalability. AntStack implemented AWS Lambda for highly scalable and cost-efficient image processing, where the Lambda function processed uploaded images and stored them in an S3 bucket. This serverless solution eliminated the need for separate servers and reduced strain on the API servers, providing a seamless and efficient alternative.
Unbound User Expansion
The company sought to improve user experience and retention by adding new features to their platform. However, their current infrastructure was unable to handle a larger influx of users, limiting their expansion plans. AntStack’s partnership with the company optimized their infrastructure and developed new features, simplifying media streaming and document viewing for users. This saved time and improved the user experience, resulting in efficient user growth within and beyond the US.
Digital Transformation - From Monolithic to Microservices
The company’s previous monolithic setup relied on an EC2 machine for running CPU-intensive operations like S3 uploads and downloads of large files exceeding 10-20GB, making it tough to manage. AntStack transformed the company’s heavy CPU operations by using AWS Fargate, a serverless environment that runs containers without requiring infrastructure management. AntStack’s use of Amazon ECS and Fargate allowed the company to achieve rapid digital transformation at scale, eliminating operational overheads such as server management, scaling, and patching. They introduced a Fargate Task for file downloads, creating zip archives of multiple files from one S3 bucket to another, resulting in remarkable efficiency.
Startup Within the Organisation
AntStack partnered with the company and acted as a startup within their organization, going above and beyond the initial task of building the product. The client is extremely happy with how the team not only delivered an incredible product but also actively contributed to an enhanced user experience by suggesting new features and optimizing the infrastructure. AntStack’s proactive approach extended beyond the scope of their responsibilities, and their willingness to provide valueadded services resulted in significant improvements to the end product that set them apart as a trusted partner in digital transformation.
- Optimized infrastructure and simplified workflows for enhanced operational efficiency and scalability.
- Cut IT infrastructure expenditure by 50% and increased new feature deployment frequency by 60% with scalable AWS serverless services and OpenSearch.
- Reduced feature deployment time by 40% with serverless architecture for independent development.
- Improved application speed by 50% with sub-second latency APIs developed using Lambda and API Gateway.
- Migrated from a monolithic application to an effective serverless system with Lambda resulting in improved application performance and user experience.
