Neuron improves cloud DevOps and InfoSec efficiency through real-time posture visibility

Homepage
www.rideneuron.com
TL;DR
Goals & challenges
  1. Managing a dynamic environment with 1,000+ resources on AWS.
  2. Triaging dozens of alerts per day from current tools.
  3. Looking for ways to manage their cloud configuration and cost at scale.
The solution
  1. Clear understanding of cloud configuration and topology based on AWS CloudTrail integration for event-driven results.
  2. Real-time compliance with best practices through architectural standards.
  3. Single source of context to identify and fix issues.  
Results
  1. Efficient operations processes with the complete context of the environment.
  2. Reduced time to triage and fix issues.  
  3. Prevented costly misconfigurations with the gained understanding of the environment.

The customer

Neuron is Australia and Canada’s leading e-scooter operator. The company differentiates by being the best partner to cities while also leading the industry when it comes to safety and sustainable operations.

Founded in Singapore in 2016, the company designs and manufactures its own e-scooters and the system that runs them.

The company has introduced an impressive number of industry world firsts and pioneering innovations including e-scooter battery swapping, geofencing control and integrated helmets. Neuron operates in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United Kingdom.

Neuron Mobility uses AWS to support and scale their dynamic infrastructure.  

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Before Stream, we found it difficult to identify the source of a vulnerability and how the vulnerable resource fits in our topology. This context helps us find the right fix and minimize negative impacts of configuration changes. “
Arron Li, IT and Service Security Team of Neuron

The challenge

Fast-scaling infrastructure made it hard to maintain security and compliance with native tools. The cloud-native software development team of Neuron Mobility received dozens of alerts daily. Handling these alerts proved to be difficult without the context of their environment.

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The solution:

"Getting a clear understanding of how resources are connected and how they operate in our topology saves us a lot of time to identify issues and troubleshoot. With this deeper understanding of our posture, we can prevent future issues and design for scale across regions and accounts.”
Eric Lim , Software Development Team
  • Discovery feature of the Stream platform helps us understand the complete context of our infrastructure, for example they can quickly identify which resources belong to which account, and the context of how it’s being used and how it connects to the rest of the infrastructure.
  • Being able to monitor all events and their impacts via the AWS CloudTrail integration and pushing noteworthy events to Slack helps the lean team make a big impact. When the team identifies critical events or issues, they can easily gather the knowledge needed to identify the right fix point and implement the right solution.  
  • The cost feature of the platform helped identify cost optimization opportunities which helped better manage AWS budgets and reduce costs. By seeing Neuron Mobility’s entire AWS posture across accounts and regions, engineering teams have a better understanding of their environment and operate more efficiently than before. The team also leverages Stream's architectural standards to assure real-time compliance with CIS benchmarks and other best practices.  

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“In simple terms, Stream makes ops and security teams’ work easier than before. The teams save a lot of time in repetitive tasks and help level-up junior resources to track, trace and handle AWS operations as well as seasoned resources.”
Arron Li, IT and Service Security Team of Neuron

Working with Stream

  • The software engineering team first met Stream at the AWS Summit in Singapore, and quickly followed up with a proof of concept to experience visibility capabilities on AWS.  
  • The implementation of the platform to cover all Neuron Mobility accounts on AWS took less than two hours and was very straightforward with AWS CloudFormation stacks.
  • The Stream team was very helpful with the process. The product documentation was concise and clear. The support team has been very responsive in addressing reported issues, solving issues in one to two days.  
The Stream platform highly benefits our operations and security teams with added visibility and control.”
Arron Li, IT and Service Security Team of Neuron

Next, Neuron is looking to increase its Stream usage by adopting:  

  • Optimize internal processes and playbooks to make Stream available to other teams.
  • Experiment with the simulation capabilities to cover their CI/CD processes for infrastructure as code.  

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