Bank of Cyprus

Peace of mind, delivered in two weeks: How Cloudflare and Parsectix keep Bank of Cyprus’s digital channels always available

Bank of Cyprus is one of the most established and systemically important financial institutions in Cyprus, directly supervised by the European Central Bank. Known for its innovation-driven mindset, Bank of Cyprus leads the market in digital banking adoption, with a mobile app used by hundreds of thousands. The institution continuously invests in secure, high-performance infrastructure to meet strict regulatory requirements and deliver seamless, always-available services to a growing international customer base.

Manual effort to react, costly to ignore

Before implementing Cloudflare’s Magic Transit, Bank of Cyprus’s infrastructure was potentially susceptible to large-scale DDoS attacks, posing serious risks to service availability, regulatory compliance, and customer trust. Manual mitigation often required effort, time and strain on internal teams. As a systemically important financial institution operating in a tightly regulated environment, Bank of Cyprus needed a scalable, real-time solution to ensure uninterrupted service and meet strict security and compliance standards.

After extensive research and with Parsectix’s guidance, Bank of Cyprus selected Cloudflare as the best-fit solution. Parsectix’s experience in financial services security was critical in tailoring this decision. Magic Transit was chosen for its range of features and resilience. Its key differentiators included:

• Near-instant mitigation, with an average response time of around five seconds
• Broad-spectrum protection against diverse DDoS attack vendors
• Scalable cloud-native architecture with global reach, with local data centers in Cyprus.
• User-friendly management, offering direct control and visibility for the bank’s security teams

Together, these capabilities made Cloudflare the clear choice for fortifying Bank of Cyprus’s digital infrastructure against evolving threats.

Stopping DDoS attacks in seconds

Cloudflare Magic Transit enables Bank of Cyprus to mitigate DDoS attacks automatically, without requiring manual intervention or service interruption. Over the past three months, the solution has been used to address high-volume attacks that would otherwise have involved considerable investigation and response efforts.

Cloudflare and Parsectix conducted a tailored two-week onboarding process, optimising configurations to align with the Bank of Cyprus’s specific traffic patterns. Following implementation, the platform has enhanced system availability and enabled internal teams to focus on proactive security measures rather than reactive incident mitigation.

In addition to Magic Transit, Bank of Cyprus also leveraged other critical capabilities provided by Cloudflare and Parsectix to further strengthen its security operations and integration:

• Firewall – An additional layer of protection tailored to financial service use cases
• DDoS Protection – At massive scale, without the limitations of hardware scrubbing
• Network Services – Supporting global connectivity and performance
• Log Forwarding / SIEM Integration – Allowing for deep observability and compliance auditing

The people behind the protection

From the early planning stages through to implementation and support, Bank of Cyprus worked closely with Parsectix, a trusted partner that ensured everything moved smoothly and efficiently. Their role was essential in helping the internal teams at Bank of Cyprus translate goals into working solutions, while coordinating with Cloudflare behind the scenes.

Bank of Cyprus described Parsectix as “instrumental in enabling our Cloudflare account and implementing key features and configuration.” By facilitating communication with the right contacts at Cloudflare & local ISPs, Parsectix helped speed up the project and avoid delays that could have impacted delivery. Throughout the process, they remained consistent, collaborative, and always on point.

What was the result?

• Automatic DDoS mitigation in ~5 seconds
• Large-scale attacks blocked in 3 months without manual intervention
• Security teams shifted from reactive firefighting to strategic security work
• Seamless service continuity for global users, even under active attack

From repeated disruptions to reliable service

After deploying Magic Transit, service availability improved during frequent high-volume DDoS attacks. Mitigation is now automatic and immediate, so Bank of Cyprus customers can use digital services without disruption.

According to the Bank of Cyprus, “the biggest impact was in the availability of the digital channels and services offered to the Bank’s customers. At the event of a DDoS attack, the remediations are triggered in seconds with minimal impact on our services’ availability.”

This automation also freed up Bank of Cyprus's security team from routine firefighting. “The improved efficiencies result from the mitigation of high-volume DDoS attacks, which could have otherwise caused service degradation and required manual investigation and configuration by security engineers,” they explained.

Looking ahead: A foundation for future resilience

As the bank continues to reassess its overall security architecture and prepare for upcoming digital initiatives, Cloudflare is considered a strategic option for future expansion. With a proven track record of performance, local infrastructure presence, and strong collaboration through Parsectix, Bank of Cyprus sees clear potential in building on this foundation.

As the regulatory landscape tightens and digital expectations rise, Bank of Cyprus's investment in automation, security, and performance has positioned it to meet future challenges with confidence, and with the right partners at its side. With Parsectix’s expertise and Cloudflare’s technology, Bank of Cyprus has built a foundation for long-term resilience.