Case Study - K2 Solutions

About

K2 Solutions, Inc. offers services to the US Government's operational, development and scientific/technical communities and to public and private entities with related requirements. K2 fields a qualified team of professionals, many of whom are former Special Forces personnel. K2 has extensive experience with Anti-Terrorism Training (AT), advanced special operations techniques, regional surveys, infrastructure targeting, and vulnerability assessments. These qualifications aid in the examination of interrelationships among assets, threats, and vulnerabilities, and enable K2 to devise countermeasures to increase awareness and security posture. Learn more about K2 Solutions at k2si.com.

Problem

When dealing with clients like the Department of Defense, security is a premium. K2 needed a secure means of sharing large files among various project resources internally and externally. A branded user interface, granular user permissions, auditing, and email notifications were all important, but at the core of all of their needs was security. No matter how secure a cloud provider's data center was, SaaS was not an option.

Solution

Enter SmartFile's on-premise appliance. SmartFile was able to deliver the branded interface, granular file permission, detailed activity tracking, and action triggered email notifications K2 was looking for. While SmartFile's cloud solution set offers the same features, our on-premise solution allowed K2 to host our file sharing platform behind their network firewalls. This provided an important layer of security.

However, it was the K2's confidence in SmartFile's less tangible security features that sealed the deal. SmartFile's on-premise appliance software shares the same code base as it's SaaS counterpart and mimics the architectural design of the SaaS infrastructure.

As a result, the self-hosted appliance inherits the same scaling and security capabilities. An example of the inherited security is the numerous tools used to defend resources against attack, starting with a segmented network that leverages filtering (firewall) at each intersection. More filtering is implemented on each host using iptables. Application firewalls are also utilized for the front-end servers (HAProxy, mod_security, etc). Within these layers are differing technologies of firewalls, which reduce the risk of a single firewall vulnerability affecting the entire stack. This just scratches the surface of SmartFile's security minded focus, but provides a small window into our approach.

In total, K2's assurance of SmartFile was measurable by our effectiveness to build, manage, and scale the security and delivery of our own infrastructure in the cloud. SmartFile's experience there paved a reliable and trustworthy path for K2 Solutions, Inc. to follow within their own network.