Meeting banking security requirements
Making sure an application is robust and secure is key for any enterprise, but especially when large numbers of transactions are involved. “When we acquired PayBox, it had been built on Google Cloud, but there was room for improvement,” explains Sarit. “We needed to bring its security features up to the level required for the banking sector.”
Working with implementation partner DoiT International, the team responsible for PayBox at Discount Bank put into place two-step authentication for logins, SSL certification, and database encryption for sensitive data using Key Management Service with Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). These features bring PayBox in line with the broader Discount Bank security ecosystem. To keep important documentation and information in one place, the PayBox team within Discount Bank uses G Suite services including Gmail and Drive to share PayBox-related documents.
The persistent disk snapshot function on Compute Engine is also key to meeting regulatory requirements. “We are obliged to create a snapshot of all the transactions taking place every 15 minutes, and keep those records for seven years,” explains Guy Tobul, Dev Team Leader at Discount Bank. Using Compute Engine, PayBox can custom design the exact virtual machines required for its workloads by specifying the exact CPU and memory it needs.
PayBox uses BigQuery to monitor the service it provides by analyzing log data. “We use BigQuery to monitor all our operations,” says Guy. “That means handling large volumes of data, as each transaction generates hundreds of log lines. We’ve been amazed at how fast BigQuery can generate reports: it’s a truly great product.”
Achieving easy deployment and scaling
To keep its application up-to-date, PayBox uses a continuous deployment model on GKE, so new code is deployed every day. As its infrastructure deploys multiple pods in parallel, it is easy to isolate any issues that might occur.
As for scaling, GKE scales automatically to meet the peaks in demand that PayBox experiences. “Traffic varies over the week, since nights and weekends are much quieter, and we also have seasonal peaks around the holidays and the beginning of the academic year,” explains Sarit. “A peak might mean 200% more traffic, but with GKE, we can easily handle the extra traffic.”