Digital14

Digital14 relies on MySQL Enterprise Edition
for Enhanced Security

"Migration from MySQL Community Edition 5.7 to MySQL Enterprise Edition 8.0 was a huge jump, but the MySQL team helped us all the way. We now have the support, stable environment, strong security, and expertise needed for safeguarding our customers' applications, devices, and network infrastructure."

Pawel Grzegrzolka,
Director for DevOps, Digital14

Introduction

Digital14 provides secure solutions, cybersecurity, and digital transformation services to public and commercial sector organizations in the United Arab Emirates. Digital14 supports intelligent and intrinsically secure digital transformations that create great experiences and unlock productivity for enterprise and government alike. The company's unique expertise in cybersecurity enable organizations to innovate with confidence and accelerate growth.

As a pioneer in smart cities and Internet of Things (IoT), the UAE is also increasingly vulnerable to the threat of cyber-attacks.

Digital14's KATIM platform is engineered to deliver ultra-secure communication and collaboration capabilities via secure network infrastructure, devices, applications, and services to protect its customers from the attacks. The company offers a wide range of customizable applications, including KATIM Messenger, KATIM Mail, and KATIM gateway. In addition, it has developed the ruggedized KATIM business phone and RO1 smartphone designed to withstand extreme field conditions.

Digital14 needed to strengthen its solutions with a highly secure and available back-end database to offer maximum security to its customers. It originally chose MySQL Community Edition but after a year upgraded to MySQL Enterprise Edition to benefit from features such as advanced security and professional 24/7 support.

Business Challenges & Goals

  • Strengthen backend services for cyber resilient applications offered to public sector customers in the UAE to guarantee consistency, integrity, and high availability.
  • Acquire an online backup and recovery system with close to zero downtime to accelerate secure data migrations and bolster service level agreements.
  • Take advantage of professional support and knowledge sharing to offer cutting edge solutions and counter cybercriminal threats to critical public sector assets.
  • Improve agility and time to market with customized cybersecurity products by adopting best practices for DevOps.

Business Results & Metrics

  • Benefitted from increased performance, enhanced security features and the professional support endorsed by developers and administrators of end-to-end secure communications solutions by upgrading from MySQL Community Edition to MySQL Enterprise Edition 8.0.
  • Maximized availability of secure applications with MySQL InnoDB Cluster, a group replication infrastructure with no data loss, automated failover, and scale-out for optimizing uptime of public sector cybersecurity and digital transformation solutions.
  • Achieved near zero downtime with MySQL Enterprise Backup, reducing backup time from 4 hours to 5 minutes and decreasing restore time from 18 hours to 14 minutes, enabling much faster security application migrations and more reliable service level agreements.
  • Increased customer trust and peace of mind by deploying advanced MySQL Enterprise Edition security tools including Authentication, Firewall, and Encryption for maximum protection against data breach and cyberattacks on communication, messaging, and conferencing services.
  • Boosted product development and rollout efficiency by leveraging Oracle Premier Support for MySQL for consultancy and knowledge sharing around the optimum design, testing, and implementation of MySQL as the back-end database for digital security applications, devices, and networks.
  • Improved DevOps collaboration, increased agility, and shortened time to market by implementing MySQL Document Store to guide best practices between development and operations teams.
  • Used MySQL Enterprise Edition as the mobile device management back-end for the company's ruggedized smartphones designed to withstand the extreme field conditions experienced by customers working in defense, emergency services, transport, and oil and gas industries.

Why MySQL Enterprise Edition

"One of the greatest benefits has been the amazing support from the MySQL team of architects assisting our enterprise-grade solution through consultancy, pilot design, workflow review, and technical support. You just cannot measure the value of that."

Pawel Grzegrzolka, Director for DevOps, Digital14

Future MySQL Products

Digital14 is progressively implementing MySQL Enterprise Edition 8.0 to support its digital strategies. The company is working with MySQL support engineers on the design and testing of multiple solutions.

One of these solutions is to design a disaster recovery cluster with zero data loss, as requested by a key public sector customer. Another is to add a further layer of security by implementing Transparent Data Encryption (TDE).

About Digital14

Digital14 is part of Abu Dhabi Holdings Group, which includes Abu Dhabi Ports, Abu Dhabi Airports, and a dozen other companies. It has a proven track record of working alongside government entities to deliver an integrated, holistic approach to cybersecurity. As Expo 2020 Dubai's Official Cyber Security Provider, it is overseeing the cybersecurity of the event's entire digital platform during its six-month run.

To learn more about Digital14, visit www.digital14.com.