Sectona embeds MySQL 8.0 into their cybersecurity product to deliver a cost-effective, turn-key software solution in support of growing security needs by customers.
Introduction
Sectona is a Gartner-rated independent software vendor (ISV) of Privileged Access Management (PAM) solutions founded in 2017 in Mumbai, India. The company provides increased visibility and governance over privileged user activities with comprehensive logs, reports, and threat intel across customers' IT infrastructures, including cloud infrastructure, network devices and custom applications.
Sectona PAM, part of Sectona Security Platform, has gained popularity beyond India covering around 100 enterprise customers across 17 countries in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Americas. Their customer portfolio includes large corporations, government departments, and financial services companies.
Business Challenges & Goals
Sectona wanted to expand their market footprint without having to rely on an external Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) and develop a competitive edge in product offering. The company needed a cost-effective database solution with a simple license model, suitable for integration into their Privileged Access Management (PAM) software.
Pursuing an on-premises business model in a competitive market, Sectona needed a trustworthy and scalable backend solution in order to continue their growth trajectory and offer a turnkey solution that meets customers' requirements for advanced security and compliance with regulatory guidelines.
A key goal with the new solution was to build a strategic relationship with a proven database vendor that would add credibility to Sectona's offering. To create a competitive security product package, the company aimed to package their PAM technology with the database as a solution for their customers. This would mean that Sectona wouldn't have to rely on any other external solution that needs to be installed and configured separately.
To provide more value to their customers, Sectona wanted to expand their development capabilities, reduce the cost of ownership of the of total package, and ensure high performance of their software.
Business Results & Metrics
As a result of the integration, Sectona achieved great business penetration into enterprise and mid-market customers looking for better performance and a reduced overhead of managing external RDBMS licensing and operations. Embedding MySQL 8.0 into their PAM software translated into 30% to 40% savings in the total cost of ownership for customers.
Sectona managed to win major business opportunities with their packaged solution bundled with MySQL database without worrying about additional overhead costs or complex database administration activities for customers.
Sectona has also seen twice as many clients purchasing now when the solution is integrated with MySQL, and has added more than 50 new customers to their portfolio recently.
The company's pre-packaged solution ensures automatic failover to multiple nodes and high availability with zero data loss, supporting customers' needs to deploy the access management software across diverse systems. Up to 10,000 database transactions per second can be managed without altering the integrity of the data or relying on external clustering and load balancing techniques.
MySQL's superior security patching and hardening capabilities help Sectona to deliver their software in a secure form, thus complying with the multiple security standards of their customers.
MySQL meets Sectona's need for simplified development to support customers of any size, from small and medium-sized companies to large enterprises.
Why MySQL
Before choosing MySQL, Sectona compared many products in the industry, including MariaDB, Microsoft SQL, and Postgres SQL. MySQL offered enterprise embedding capabilities, scalable licensing opportunities - a licensing model which particularly suits ISVs-and valuable support resources.
The simple integration and customization, the wide number of features that MySQL 8.0 provides, as well as the familiarity with MySQL also made a difference. It proved that MySQL is strong and well-suited database solution to be bundled into a cyber security solution with important benefits for both Sectona and their customers.
Implementation
A PAM version, which supports MySQL database as built-in database, was released by Sectona in January 2018. Sectona also developed a process which imports all data tables and procedures from Microsoft SQL to MySQL database 8.0, which was the first database they used.
Throughout the implementation, Sectona benefited from Oracle tech workshops and support. The solution was widely accepted by Sectona's customers, offering them ease of administration and zero additional costs.
Next Steps
Considering the advanced features of the MySQL database, the compatibility with Sectona's access management software, and its wide availability in all cloud platforms, Sectona is planning to leverage MySQL Database Service on Oracle Gen 2 Cloud infrastructure in the near future and include a SaaS alternative into their current PAM offering.