Challenge
Crefisa is constantly advancing its digital transformation to better serve millions of customers in a fast and efficient way. A key step in this journey involved modernizing its infrastructure to adopt more advanced capabilities for performance and security.
However, the migration from on-premise infrastructure to cloud environments was happening gradually. At the same time, traditional financial institutions were accelerating digital transformation to gain competitive advantage and deliver better customer experiences in terms of security, availability, and performance.
In this scenario, Crefisa needed a technology partner capable of supporting its evolution without compromising the high security and reliability standards required by the financial sector.
Solution
After evaluating several alternatives in the market, Crefisa chose Azion Platform due to its flexible model and integrated security capabilities that enable the implementation of a zero-trust architecture based on granular and multilayer protection.
Compatible with both cloud and on-premise environments, the platform enabled Crefisa to migrate its domains and run applications on Azion’s distributed infrastructure, even during the cloud transition process.
These applications created new opportunities for the company, including:
- content delivery through Azion’s globally distributed network;
- granular access control through the Firewall capability of Azion Platform;
- automation of security policies via APIs.
Using the platform’s capabilities, Crefisa implemented mechanisms such as Web Application Firewall (WAF), Network Shield, and DDoS Protection, in addition to integrating Radware Bot Manager with its security policies.
This allowed the security team to:
- create custom reputation-based lists to block abusive users, malicious IP addresses, proxies, geolocations, and Tor traffic;
- protect the application layer using WAF rules that block major web threats;
- mitigate DDoS attacks using Azion’s globally distributed infrastructure to filter malicious traffic without affecting legitimate requests;
- manage bot traffic through Radware’s bot management platform.
By implementing these capabilities, Crefisa accelerated its digital transformation, strengthened its defensive posture, and continued innovating while meeting the strict compliance requirements of the financial sector.
Results and Impact
Within just three months of implementation, Crefisa worked closely with Azion’s engineers to fully leverage the platform and develop new capabilities tailored to its needs.
With the Firewall capability of Azion Platform, Crefisa’s security team significantly reduced the effort required to contain threats. By applying predefined filters and custom blocking rules, tens of thousands of malicious access attempts are blocked each month, while Azion WAF filters hundreds of thousands of requests.
Application protection also extends to Crefisa’s APIs, combining performance and security to support modern initiatives such as Open Banking and the Crefisa Mais mobile application, used by millions of Brazilians to manage their finances.
Even while undergoing digital transformation, Crefisa was able to evolve its infrastructure and maintain competitive advantage, running applications with high performance regardless of whether they are hosted in legacy or cloud environments.
About Crefisa
Crefisa provides one of the largest and most recognized personal credit services in Brazil. In addition to its financial services operations, the group also participates in the education sector through Faculdade das Américas (FAM), one of the most innovative higher education institutions in the country.
For more than 50 years, millions of Brazilians have relied on Crefisa to finance projects, fulfill commitments, and access credit quickly and securely. The company also offers a wide range of financial services for businesses, including loans, foreign exchange, current accounts, trade notes, and receivables anticipation.
