SOFTSWISS

SOFTSWISS secures and optimizes industry-leading iGaming platform with support from Cloudflare

SOFTSWISS creates software for over 860 iGaming companies around the world. The company offers everything organizations need to launch an iGaming brand, including games, payments, licensing, player account management, engagement and retention tools, marketing and intelligence solutions, and more.

Among other achievements, SOFTSWISS was the first iGaming software company to support crypto gambling and gaming and has propelled many of their clients to win industry awards.

Challenge: Defending against DDoS and malicious bots

The gambling and iGaming industry is a frequent target of cyberattacks. Some of these attacks target the financial data and other personally identifiable information (PII) held by these platforms.

However, DDoS attacks stand alone as the most significant threat to SOFTSWISS and its clients. For some time, SOFTSWISS’ systems were targeted by multiple daily attacks designed to disrupt betting transactions.

Before switching to Cloudflare, SOFTSWISS managed their own DDoS protection. However, as the company and their customer base grew, the cost of maintaining these protections in-house became infeasible. They realized ensuring business continuity and application performance required a third-party solution.

Managing the DDoS Threat

SOFTSWISS relies on Cloudflare to protect their infrastructure from a wide range of attacks. According to Sergey Kastukevich, SOFTSWISS’ Deputy CTO, “Cloudflare acts as the sole entry point to our network infrastructure. This protects us from a range of attacks, especially at the network and transport layers.”

Routing traffic through Cloudflare’s global network dramatically reduces SOFTSWISS’ exposure to DDoS attacks. In the past, they experienced multiple DDoS attacks per week; however, after deploying Cloudflare DDoS Protection, the attacks that actually reached SOFTSWISS’ systems dropped to a few per month.

The combination of reduced attack volumes and the Cloudflare dashboard simplifies security efforts for SOFTSWISS. According to Kastukevich, “Cloudflare's protection allows us to concentrate our security efforts on a few attack vectors, freeing up resources to improve our services for clients.”

Enhancing efficiency and application performance

Something else that attracted SOFTSWISS to Cloudflare was the latter’s SSL for SaaS offering, which simplifies certificate management for secure SSL connections. SOFTSWISS currently manages about 1,000 domains, including 300 custom hostnames. SSL for SaaS eliminates wasted time SOFTSWISS employees would otherwise have to spend configuring and managing domains.

Many of SOFTSWISS’ clients have graphics-heavy webpages, which can cause latency and generate significant load on the company’s servers. To address these issues, SOFTSWISS also uses the Cloudflare global network to host static content. On average, about 200 terabytes of data per month is now served from cache — a 90% cache hit rate.

SOFTSWISS also uses Cloudflare Argo Smart Routing to improve the performance of their clients’ applications. With the Cloudflare global network, the company has seen a 10-20% performance improvement for traffic from their EU-based data center to remote regions such as Southeast Asia and South America.

Adapting to evolving business needs

The iGaming industry is evolving rapidly, putting pressure on SOFTSWISS to scale and deliver the solutions and capabilities that their clients need. According to Kastukevich, “As the market changes, we need to rapidly change our roadmaps and products accordingly. The flexibility that Cloudflare provides us is extremely helpful since it enables us to adapt to and anticipate our clients’ needs.”

He also commented that his Cloudflare team’s deep knowledge of the iGaming industry was essential for their success. He says, “This competence in the gambling sector and great products saves us a lot of time, energy, and money. It’s vital for our time-to-market and our clients’ success.”

Finding the Right Fit

Beyond the technical capabilities, Kastukevich was also impressed by the customer service that he received as part of the Cloudflare experience. He commented, “Something I noticed immediately was that I was interacting with real people, without a script. Cloudflare puts the client first, and you can feel it.”

Based on these conversations and recommendations, he’s confident that SOFTSWISS has the solutions that they need to deliver a positive experience for their clients.