Challenge
Magalu is the most innovative retail company in LATAM[1]. With 1.76 billion USD in digital sales in 2021[2]— an increase of 22% in comparison with 2020—Magalu has the largest Brazilian retail ecosystem, which includes:
- Magalu’s e-commerce platform;
- App Magalu, with over 50,000,000 installs on Google Play;
- Magalu Marketplace; and
- dozens of companies and business units like Netshoes, KaBuM!, and more.
Having Magalu’s global-scale applications available at all times requires scalable zero-trust security solutions to contain threats, such as DDoS attacks and malicious bots. In addition, retail sites experience 200% more fraud on big holiday shopping days[3], demanding more effective monitoring of domains to prevent phishing attacks, in line with their strong compliance policies.
Magalu is always evolving its ecosystem, and its defense posture is no different. To always reach the next level, Magalu’s SOC team needed sophisticated analytic resources to improve their cyber threat intelligence, as well as their bot management capabilities.
Solution
Magalu counts on Azion’s platform to evolve its complex security posture through edge-native, real-time firewall and analytics solutions, empowering Magalu’s SOC squad with granular access control, a fine-grained bot management platform, automated threat blocking, and more.
Azion’s Firewall is designed to help companies improve web application security, minimize costs and increase productivity. Through its Web Application Firewall, Network Shield and DDoS Protection modules, and boosted with Data Stream, the solution provides Magalu’s security experts with:
- out-of-the-box protection and custom rules with threshold controls via an intuitive web console or APIs;
- address blocking based on reputation via customizable Network Lists;
- flexible rate-limiting rules to mitigate attacks on sensitive areas of the application like shipping and login;
- a test-and-deploy firewall rules feature that leverages existing CI/CD pipelines;
- collection and streaming of real-time data to their SIEM and analytic platforms for automated incident response with Data Stream connectors.
Using a BYOL licensing model afforded by the Azion Web Platform, Magalu integrated Axur Leakstream with its applications to monitor Internet activities in search of leaked credentials, allowing its team to prevent the creation of user accounts with leaked passwords and, consequently, avoid fraud.
In addition, Magalu’s SOC team also manages bad bot incidents more effectively using Radware Bot Manager in Azion’s platform, enabling them to manage bots in real time and stop automated attacks with less human effort and more efficiency.
Results and Impact
Through the automated features and resources provided by Azion’s platform, Magalu simplified security operations by blocking millions of web application threats per year via WAF, as well as bad bots using Bot Manager. Moreover, these solutions help Magalu’s security experts to focus their efforts on other complex and strategic issues, optimizing productivity and man-hour costs.
Leveraging the scalability and flexibility of Azion’s platform, the security team from LuizaLabs built secure micro-perimeters where or close to where their data actually lives with high granularity, according to their needs and business logic. In addition, the partnership between LuizaLabs and Azion’s engineering squad allows the construction of an even more robust defense.
In terms of observability, Magalu’s team receives over 20 TB of data per month on average through Azion’s Data Stream connectors. All the data can be visualized in real-time using Magalu’s preferred analytic tools and SIEM platforms, enhancing their cyber threat intelligence.
These initiatives were crucial to Magalu overcoming one of the biggest challenges: guaranteeing the highest availability of its hundreds of applications, even during campaigns like “Liquidação Fantástica,” which is always held in January, and “Black das Blacks,” in which Magalu organizes a live event on national television with today’s celebrities and influencers, attracting millions of shoppers to its e-commerce platform on Black Friday.
About Magalu
Magazine Luiza is one of the largest retail companies in Brazil. Founded in 1957 in the city of Franca, in the interior of São Paulo state, the chain consists of more than 1,000 physical stores that operate in an integrated manner with its e-commerce. Since 2015, the company has dedicated efforts to consolidate itself as a tech company—that is, to transform itself digitally and, in doing so, eliminate the barriers between physical and virtual, making Magalu an excellent platform for customers and partner stores. In order to put in place the ambitious plans for evolution in the digital environment, the company created its own innovation laboratory, LuizaLabs, which today is composed of dozens of squads that, together, amount to about 750 specialists who develop solutions that impact the consumer experience.
