Question: What do a cosmetics company and a gaming platform have in common?

A few things, actually:

• Millions of customers

• Strong security postures

• Optimized digital experiences

We live in a world that runs on apps. Whether social media, streaming services, or how we order our coffee, people everywhere use apps to simplify their lives. In fact, according to the data.ai State of Mobile 2023 report, consumers worldwide spent 108 billion hours shopping on apps, spending over $150 billion in 2022.

With so much revenue at stake, it’s critical to protect digital experience from advanced threats. The IBM 2022 Cost of a Data Breach Report explains that the average cost of a breach is $4.35 million and 60% of companies reporting a breach ultimately pass this cost on to customers by raising prices.

As organizations expand digital footprints to engage wider audiences, they need to protect systems from malicious threats. To better understand how applications run—and to optimize user experiences—organizations are turning to network detection and response (NDR) platforms to improve security, which in turn keeps customers happy.

Ulta Beauty Scales to the Cloud

As the nation’s largest beauty retailer, Ulta Beauty has a reputation for delivering exceptional customer experiences with its unique assortment, passionate associates and services, both in person and online. When the company decided to migrate its e-commerce platform to the cloud, the migration necessitated a security posture to scale with data centers and protect cloud workflows. "We are always working to wow our guests, and from our perspective, that means we must protect those guests," says Diane Brown, vice president, IT Risk Management. "As our network grew, we lacked the visibility needed to detect and respond to breaches and attacks swiftly."

As Ulta Beauty deployed NDR, the retailer increased its cloud-scale machine learning which gave networking and security teams the ability to spot and resolve performance issues. “We can quickly identify vulnerabilities and understand how our applications are performing in the cloud," explains John Kreis, senior IT engineer. "The technology really helps us accelerate cloud adoption by ensuring our workloads are secure."

Having cloud-native NDR enabled Ulta Beauty to accelerate its cloud migration with confidence in its security relative to advanced threats. Brown notes the insights from network data allows her team of engineers to “focus on the things that matter most, like projects, strategic initiatives, and—most importantly—innovation in service of guests.”

Wizards of the Coast Keeps on Playing

From dungeon crawling to deck building, Wizards of the Coast knows how to capture the imagination of its dedicated fanbase. When the gaming company’s development team made the leap from the tabletop to the desktop, it needed the freedom to create and design quickly—and without compromising on security.

"The developers want to put out quality games that are fun, that are exciting, and they don't want the friction because it's a distraction," explains Dan McDaniel, Chief Architect and Information Security Officer at Wizards of the Coast. "It slows them down, but most of all, it makes them justify what they're doing, which puts pretty much anybody on their heels."

The company built its online gaming platform on AWS and needed a cloud-native solution that could collect and analyze network traffic packets and handle global demand. With a growing list of online multiplayer games, a single incident could bring gameplay to a screeching halt. "What ExtraHop allows me to do is to provide security without validating the architecture of their games before they go live," McDaniel says. "It gives (developers) the freedom to create and go, but I still have visibility and transparency into my risk."

Protecting the Future of E-Commerce

Throughout the pandemic, the mobile marketplace cemented itself as a preferred way to shop all over the world. The State of Mobile report states that even as in-store shopping returned to a relative level of normalcy in 2022, apps remained an important part of daily life offering consumers a way to save money.

Organizations will continue to embrace digital transformations, which means protecting critical, revenue-generating processes from cyber attacks will be even more important. NDR allows businesses to maintain a competitive edge with complete network visibility into hybrid and multicloud environments. These insights empower security teams to minimize threats of disruption and create more runways to innovate and improve customer experiences.