Futurex customer success stories: a guided tour
Introduction
The past few years have seen Futurex rapidly expand its operations around the world. As we’ve pursued new markets and taken on exciting projects, we’ve documented our customer success stories with a series of case studies. The case studies summarized below showcase our range of cryptographic solutions, the diversity of our clients and verticals, and the spirit of innovation that has made Futurex the preferred cryptography provider for organizations around the world.
Unlimited scalability through cloud migration: CSU
The publicly-traded company CSU provides transaction processing and customer relations solutions to clients throughout Brazil.
CSU approached Futurex to upgrade its cryptographic infrastructure. The company sought to pioneer Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) and expand its operations into new verticals. CSU needed its BaaS applications to run in Amazon Web Services (AWS), so it sought a cryptography provider with native integration, as well as a high level of scalability and compliance. This made Futurex a perfect fit.
Futurex’s Solutions Architect team helped CSU set up a license for the VirtuCrypt cloud platform and configure it to meet their cryptographic requirements. VirtuCrypt’s native integration with AWS made it easy and fast to integrate with their BaaS applications. This reduced the time to market for CSU, helping them meet their goal of pioneering BaaS in Brazil. As a centralized cloud cryptography platform, VirtuCrypt allowed CSU to share its cryptographic resources across all business units, including a new one created specifically for BaaS operations.
Payment issuing on the cloud: a large, privately held UK bank
As one of the UK’s most well-recognized privately owned banks, this institution was seeking to modernize its card issuance process while maintaining its high standard of service and security.
The bank approached Futurex to expand its cryptographic infrastructure, with a focus on their card issuance environment. They required their payment HSMs to connect to workloads running inside Amazon Web Services (AWS), necessitating a cryptography provider with native integration, high scalability, and strict compliance standards, making Futurex an ideal partner.
Futurex’s Solutions Architect team assisted the bank in setting up cloud payment HSMs in Futurex’s VirtuCrypt cloud platform and configured it to meet their specific cryptographic requirements, with the bank transacting the service through AWS Marketplace. VirtuCrypt’s native integration with AWS facilitated a quick and seamless integration with their card issuance applications, accelerating their time to market. As a centralized cloud cryptography platform, VirtuCrypt enabled the bank to share its cryptographic resources across all business units, thus driving efficiency and performance in their card issuance operations.
15 years of future-proof payment processing: EPX
Electronic Payment Exchange (EPX) offers payment processing, acquiring, and backend services to clients in diverse markets around the world. In 2007, EPX determined that, to remain competitive on a global scale, it needed to increase processing capabilities, develop new services for its customers. The company worked with Futurex to deploy on-premises cryptographic infrastructure to meet these requirements. EPX’s central goal was to provide a single point of integration between its platform and its clients to streamline the customer experience. One of Futurex’s key specialties is in developing custom integration, making us a great fit for the job.
Futurex’s Solutions Architect team helped EPX deploy the Excrypt series of payment HSMs—powerful, user-centric modules with extensive remote management capabilities. These HSMs became such a core component of EPX’s infrastructure that the company has relied on three generations of the Excrypt series. Thanks to the shared code base common to Futurex solutions, upgrading and integrating new HSMs was a swift and simple process.
In the time since, Futurex solutions helped EPX centralize the way it managed its cryptographic infrastructure, allowing the organization to provide a single integration point for customers and roll out new revenue-generating services. When EPX needed to get a P2P certification, they were relieved to avoid compliance issues thanks to the high level of compliance inherent to Futurex system architecture, including PCI HSM and FIPS 140-2 Level 3. Over time, EPX’s parent company NAB would go on to acquire 12 subsidiary companies throughout its partnership with Futurex. In November 2020, EPX was able to take advantage of their Futurex-provided infrastructure even further, as it easily upgraded its HSM firmware to support new key blocking compliance requirements.
Remote key loading in the cloud: Miura Systems
With over 3 million terminals worldwide, Miura Systems provides mobile payment solutions to businesses in every economic sector. Miura Systems was looking for a cloud remote key loading (RKL) solution that could function on a global level while being managed from a centralized location. They found that Futurex’s VirtuCrypt cloud platform could accomplish this while reducing their TCO and PCI compliance scope. Miura Systems made it clear that they needed a highly scalable platform that would grow with the company over time.
After a successful proof-of-concept, Miura Systems worked with Futurex to establish a cloud RKL environment. Futurex ensured that their environment would allow Miura Systems to securely upload device data and key cryptograms, and to track and control key injections. Miura benefited from VirtuCrypt’s high scalability with processing throughput quickly scaling up or down according to need.
Miura saw a reduction in both CapEx and OpEx after deploying RKL in VirtuCrypt. Futurex’s preparation included previously established registration and pre-exchanged keys with major processors like Chase, First Data, TSYS, and others, reduced the time and complexity of establishing processor keys for future key exchanges. Miura Systems went on to establish full redundancy with automated failover, to ensure that their global operations would continue with high availability.
Custom development for self-service payments: Nautilus Hyosung, Inc.
Based out of South Korea, Nautilus Hyosung is a major provider of self-service solutions in hardware, software, and banking services. When they contacted Futurex to request a custom development project, Nautilus Hyosung was looking for a way to securely inject asymmetric keys into both its new and existing EPPs. The solution needed to be cost-effective, easy to implement and maintain, and compliant with industry regulations. Nautilus Hyosung also needed to further enhance its already-robust infrastructure to ensure compliance and improved key injection security. Because this high-visibility project had tight deadlines, Hyosung requested a one-month project timeline. As always, Futurex was up for the challenge.
After consulting with Futurex, Nautilus Hyosung elected to implement Futurex’s Manufacturer Class Certificate Authority Server for its asymmetric key injection needs as well as to sign third-party certificate signing requests (CSRs) for incorporation into its trusted domain. Futurex’s Solutions Architects worked closely with Hyosung’s project managers to develop the custom functionality required for Hyosung’s infrastructure.
As a result, Nautilus Hyosung was able to enhance the security of its EPPs, streamline the efficiency of its key injection processes, and implement remote key loading functionality. As one of the leading ATM manufacturers in the world, Hyosung’s new solution allows it to continue to deploy some of the most advanced technology in the industry.
Conclusion
The customer success stories here show the sheer variety of different projects and clients that Futurex undertakes and serves, though they represent only a small fraction of our total accomplishments over the last year. The team at Futurex is eagerly looking forward to what this next year has in store.
Contact Futurex to learn more about any particular case study, or if you want to know how our innovative cryptographic solutions could benefit your organization, request a demo.
