Challenging the Limits in Security:

AWS and Intcomex Cloud Elevate Aplicom to New Heights of Cloud Protection

Aplicom is a Costa Rican company that has been serving as a commercial ally in the digital transformation processes of companies for over 24 years.

As a 100% Costa Rican enterprise, their value proposition lies in empowering organizations with technology, innovation, and knowledge, reducing operational expenses, and increasing efficiency and productivity across all processes.

Aplicom’s core business revolves around document management solutions, with over 500 active clients and a monthly digitization volume of approximately 2.5 million documents.

The Challenge

Aplicom’s main challenge was to enhance the security and availability of their premier distributed content management solution, Laserfiche. Following cyber-attacks compromising the services of several public and private entities in Costa Rica, Aplicom realized that failing to improve their security measures could not only affect their own services but also undermine the reputation and trust they had built with their clients. This, in turn, would impact on the overall business.

Why AWS?

When considering the option of a technological upgrade in their local data center or migrating their workloads to the cloud with the support of Intcomex, Aplicom identified and prioritized several advantages AWS could provide in addressing their challenges:

• The service levels offered by AWS for its services far surpass those of operating in a local data center, such as the one Aplicom previously had.
• Intcomex’s support in designing architecture that would fit within their budget and address Aplicom’s challenges.
• Access to various AWS services and features that would enhance the security posture of Aplicom’s workloads, such as security groups, WAF, and Security Hub.
• Improved visibility of service usage and status in the proposed architecture through CloudWatch, enabling Aplicom to identify and optimize their workloads.

Why did they work with us?

Intcomex supported Aplicom throughout various phases of this project, with some of the key aspects being:

• Explaining and highlighting the advantages of migrating their workloads to AWS.
• Architecture design.
• Cost estimation generation.
• Assisting with credit management with AWS.
• Service implementation.
• Providing guidance during implementation to address any doubts.
• Cost optimization using Saving Plans.

The Solution

To enhance their security posture, Aplicom utilized and parameterized various AWS services. The primary service utilized was the managed WAF service, taking advantage of the core rules provided and managed directly by AWS, while also incorporating some custom rules.

Key services used:

• Microsoft SQL Server Database.
• Microsoft IIS Server.
• Microsoft Active Directory.
• Web Server with Apache.
• Web Server with WordPress.
• AWS WAF. Load Balancer.
• Certificate Manager.
• AWS Backup.
• Security Hub.

Solution Diagram 

The Benefits

As a result of this project and after several months of having their primary production environments on AWS, Aplicom has committed to a 3-year purchase agreement using Saving Plans to optimize costs. Additionally, they plan to implement additional servers in the near future.

The main benefits achieved include the detection and blocking of malicious traffic through the WAF service, as well as the configuration of rules on the application load balancer, providing Aplicom with greater control over their workloads. Furthermore, the monitoring, backup, and deployment across multiple availability zones have enabled Aplicom to operate and manage workload availability in a manner that was challenging to achieve in their previous environments (local data centers).

The flexibility offered by AWS has also allowed Aplicom to conduct service tests by enabling and disabling infrastructure on-demand.