Amber Group

Amber Group uses Cloudflare to improve performance and enhance customer service

Amber Group is a digital asset and Fintech services company with a presence in Asia, Europe, and the Americas. It provides a full range of high-touch digital asset and liquidity services, advanced trading tools, and innovative financial products, all of which have helped it serve more than 2000 clients, achieve a cumulative trade volume of over $1 trillion, and win a series of awards including Best Technology - Infrastructure 2023 and Best Digital Wealth Management Company Global 2023.

Investing to ensure its clients can access the best possible digital asset services, in 2022 the Asia-focused Amber Group acquired Singapore-based Sparrow Tech Private Limited, a Major Payment Institution (MPI) license holder licensed to provide digital payment tokens (DPT) services in Singapore by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

Challenge: Finding a safe, proven, and cost-efficient partner for a seamless crypto trading experience

Security and platform reliability are at the core of Amber Group and Sparrow Exchange’s priorities because they are the keys to establishing consumer trust and growing a loyal client base.

“Protecting our customers’ data and assets is our key priority,” explains Amber Group’s Liu Li, Chief Technology Officer at Sparrow Exchange. “No matter what the markets are doing or how high transaction request volumes get, we strive to provide our clients with a secure, seamless, and low-friction trading experience. We achieve that by maintaining the best infrastructure and security systems technically possible.”

With security and user experience at the top of its list of priorities, Amber Group sought a partnership to improve its website performance while keeping control of costs.

"We needed a CDN solution that could dynamically adjust costs based on variable traffic levels and integrate seamlessly with our robust security stack," says Liu Li.

The ideal solution would also be simple to configure and adapt over time to meet its growing performance and scalability demands while maintaining a high level of security.This is where Cloudflare came in.

"Cloudflare offered a comprehensive solution that addressed all of our needs," says Liu Li. "Their global network, advanced security features, and flexible pricing model made them the ideal partner for our business."

Cloudflare WAF: Protecting Against Malicious Attacks

In the digital asset space, hacking and malicious attacks to compromise financial data are widespread. Amber Group recognized the need for a robust security solution to protect its customers' data and assets.

"We implemented the Cloudflare WAF to bolster our infrastructure and secure our customer data against a variety of online threats," says Liu Li. "Cloudflare's WAF provides real-time protection against a wide range of attacks."

Cloudflare Zero Trust: Securing Internal Tools and Apps

The Sparrow team also uses Cloudflare to secure its internal applications, critical SaaS tools, and private cloud from unwelcome access across the public Internet. Using Access, one of Cloudflare’s Internet-native Zero Trust services, the Sparrow DevOps team replaced its difficult-to-deploy-and-maintain traditional VPN technology.

“Using Cloudflare, we implemented identity-based security procedures centered on an email-based OTP process,” says Liu Li. “After we explored our options, Cloudflare was simpler to implement — beyond entering a few DNS addresses we didn't have to make changes like installing high-maintenance VPN servers, third-party software, or firewalls.”

Sparrow also relies on Workers and the Cloudflare developer platform to secure and modify HTTP headers from the global network in real time.

“We use Workers to automate the capture and modification of HTTP headers on the fly,” says Liu Li. “That Workers implementation has been so effective that it has been running without failure or intervention since we deployed it.”

Cloudflare's Global Network: Performance and Reliability

Encouraged by the successful long-term collaboration between Cloudflare and its newest acquisition and impressed with Cloudflare’s track record in the fintech ecosystem, Amber Group began evaluating the global network as an alternative to its existing CDN. With network locations in over 310 cities and 120 countries and connections to most global ISP providers, Cloudflare easily outclassed the competition. Cloudflare also provided the Amber Group with a straightforward pricing mode free of costly hidden add-ons.

“Cloudflare is a much more viable approach,” says Liu Li. “The UI is much simpler in terms of bandwidth, overall use, and granular control. Cloudflare is simply a much more dynamic product.”

Securing a Complex Legacy Infrastructure

Out of the box, Cloudflare provided Amber Group’s websites, applications, and online services an additional layer of security and performance enhancements even in traditionally challenging regional markets. Amber Group uses Cloudflare to complement and bolster the performance of its existing security infrastructure.

“We already had a series of sophisticated use cases and configurations securing Amber Group,” says Liu Li. “Now we maintain those security parameters and measures behind Cloudflare.”

In addition, Cloudflare tools like Argo Smart Routing detect network congestion in real-time to dynamically reroute Amber Group’s traffic across the fastest and most reliable network paths, while encrypting it against potential threats.

A Strong Partnership for the Future

In Liu Li’s experience, Cloudflare is a reliable partner that focuses strongly on its customers’ online safety and success. It is a relationship that he plans to continue in the long term.

“Cloudflare is always responsive, particularly during our migration when we needed all the help we could get. The Cloudflare customer success teams provide exceptional value, minimizing downtime while promoting a flexible learning environment,” he says, “We always keep a lookout for new products that Cloudflare brings to market.”