Leading Taiwanese Media Company

Leading Taiwanese media company stops automated online threats and maintains user trust with Cloudflare

This Taiwanese news and media outlet is one of the country’s first privately owned terrestrial television broadcasters. Its mission — reflected in the motto “From the people, for the people” — centers on promoting Taiwanese heritage by creating productions that range from cultural and variety content to dramatic series with a distinctly Taiwanese flavor.

Challenge: Mitigating persistent bot attacks to maintain security, performance, availability, and customer trust

Besides its role as a producer of Taiwanese entertainment media, as one of Taiwan’s top-five media outlets by number of users, the media operator is an essential resource for government-related news exposure. However, this made the company a prime target for unwanted attention. When a series of network and DDoS attacks and malicious bot scraping incidents threatened to cripple its web presence and endanger its data, user trust, user confidentiality, and ability to continue delivering uninterrupted service, the operator needed an immediate remedy.

The company needed a solution that could scale to handle attacks and traffic spikes during significant news events, blocking malicious bots without impacting legitimate traffic. Motivated to find a robust and scalable solution quickly, the company turned to local systems integrator Omni Intelligent Services, who recommended Cloudflare’s comprehensive platform of unified, cloud-native security and connectivity solutions.

Working together to tackle the media operator’s challenges, Cloudflare and Omni Intelligent Services set out to help the company achieve the following IT and security objectives:

• Secure websites and applications against automated attacks
• Safeguard user data and company information
• Prevent downtime and promote system availability and rapid recovery
• Provide fast and reliable global content delivery

Solution: Stopping automated attacks with Cloudflare application services

To stop the automated attacks against its business-critical web applications, the media company implemented Cloudflare’s application security services, beginning with the Web application Firewall (WAF). The Cloudflare WAF provides layered protection and allows the company to define flexible security policies tailored to its needs. Cloudflare rulesets, exposed credential checks, uploaded content scanning, and cloud-native global threat intelligence and machine learning technology safeguard the company against emergent threats and zero-day vulnerabilities.

Further securing the company's public web properties, Cloudflare Bot Management, Rate Limiting, and DDoS protection stop high-precision layer 7 attacks with granular configuration options. Together, the Cloudflare application security solutions have significantly reduced the media outlet’s attack surface against automated bots, malware, and social engineering — all while limiting administrative complexity with a single control interface.

Eliminating threats in the connectivity cloud to reduce costs, improve user engagement, and enhance performance

Using Cloudflare to secure its web properties, the media producer saw immediate results Cloudflare’s comprehensive logging and layer 3, 4, and 7 bot and DDoS protection enabled the media company to identify, analyze, and block threat requests on the global network before they could do any harm. Cloudflare also enables the company to filter malicious traffic while accommodating beneficial bots, improving usability and encouraging user interaction.

In addition to securing the media operator’s websites, applications, and user data, blocking external threats in the cloud reduced the company’s bandwidth consumption. Because the company was no longer serving data to the malicious bots, this resulted in significant cost savings. The Cloudflare CDN, with over 320 points of presence in 120 countries on the global network, added another layer of performance and resilience, improving user engagement while reducing the media operator’s bandwidth expenditures even further.

A seamless partnered Cloudflare implementation

Omni Intelligent Services and Cloudflare's team of experts provided on-demand guidance and support to the media outlet throughout the implementation. Once deployed, Cloudflare security bolstered the company's cybersecurity posture, protecting it against threats and enhancing network resilience.

From Omni Intelligent Services’ recommendation to the initial contact with Cloudflare, and throughout the onboarding and implementation processes, the local systems integrator was instrumental in rapidly resolving the automated attacks. To ensure a positive client experience and positive business outcomes, the integrator acted as liaison and advisor, minimizing language and cultural barriers, clearly defining requirements, and helping optimize the solution.

Ensuring a seamless transition, Cloudflare supported all phases of the engagement, providing guidance and support by responding to inquiries, addressing concerns, and tailoring services to meet specific needs. As a trusted partner strongly committed to client success, Cloudflare continues to provide proactive, ongoing support, responding swiftly to each new incident.