delivers a proprietary digital platform that enables retail customers to trade contracts for difference (CFD) internationally. Founded in 2008 with offices across the world, the company has more than 430,000 active customers who collectively traded upwards of $1.7 trillion in 2020 across more than 2,500 global financial instruments, including equities, indices, commodities, options, ETFs, foreign exchange, and cryptocurrencies.
After acquiring two companies in the United States in 2021, Plus500 plans to offer trading opportunities to U.S. customers while entering the futures and options on futures market for the first time.
The Challenge: Managing a Complex Global Remote Environment
In 2009, Idan Mashaal joined Plus500 as the director of information technology and was tasked with designing the company鈥檚 network infrastructure. Right out of the gate, Mashaal 鈥� who鈥檚 now the company鈥檚 director of cybersecurity 鈥� decided to build bottom-up work from home capabilities into Plus500鈥檚 footprint because the company was aiming to expand internationally.
Although Plus500 was a Windows shop at the time, Mashaal 鈥� who prefers Mac and Linux devices 鈥� didn鈥檛 treat it as one.
鈥淚 didn鈥檛 lean into Active Directory, and that was hard because it鈥檚 easy to deploy and easy to manage,鈥� Mashaal said. 鈥淏ut I didn鈥檛 want to use it because we needed to connect offices across regions of the world with VPNs, and it would be too much of a headache to do authentication or deploy software. So, I had to build out some custom tools and scripts to work around that.鈥�
To make life easier, Mashaal moved the Plus500 team from Exchange to Google Workspace, and during this transition, Mashaal had an epiphany.
鈥淚 was like, 鈥榃hy can鈥檛 I assume that Google will be my Active Directory?鈥欌�� Mashaal explained. 鈥溾�榃hy can鈥檛 I control my devices from Google?鈥欌��
The Solution: The Long Awaited Discovery of 探花大神
At the time, that capability didn鈥檛 exist. But Mashaal knew it would emerge at some point, and he decided to wait it out.
鈥淭hat decision made life very difficult because we were growing and growing and I had no domain controller,鈥� Mashaal said, 鈥淚 had no capability to control my endpoints in a standard way.鈥�
As a workaround, Mashaal created a GPO internally. But once Plus500 began adding Macs into the mix, he realized he needed a complete solution that enabled him to easily manage all devices.
After sifting through some potential solutions 鈥� including Okta and OneLogin 鈥� and deciding that they didn鈥檛 make sense for Plus500鈥檚 use case, Mashaal ultimately came across 探花大神, which had just added the capabilities he needed.
鈥淓very quarter, I was researching the market to see what tools were available. Finally, I was like, 鈥極kay, now we鈥檙e talking,鈥欌�� Mashaal continued. 鈥淭his is what I鈥檝e been looking for since 2012.鈥�
After a quick proof of concept, Mashaal was able to easily convince Plus500鈥檚 current IT manager that 探花大神 was the perfect solution to their problem. Shortly thereafter, they rolled out 探花大神 to 150 users in their offices in Haifa and Tel-Aviv, Israel, and they haven鈥檛 looked back since.
The Results: Happy Employees and Secure Systems
Fast-forward to today, and Plus500 now has roughly 500 users on 探花大神. Thanks to 探花大神, onboarding new users is painless. 鈥淚t鈥檚 as easy as you think: We just install the agent,鈥� Mashaal said. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 it.鈥� Offboarding is also a cinch, too; all it takes is one click to revoke access.
At the highest level, 探花大神 makes life easier for Plus500鈥檚 employees. 鈥淭hey feel empowered because now they can get to their tasks,鈥� Mashaal explained. Beyond that, 探花大神 has delivered a number of additional benefits, which we鈥檒l examine below.
Business continuity
The Plus500 team planned to finish deploying 探花大神 during the first quarter of 2020, but when March rolled around, the pandemic added a new layer to consider 鈥� remote users.
鈥淚 didn鈥檛 let that bother me because we had a plan,鈥� Mashaal continued. 鈥淚t took us another six months, but we were migrating people to 探花大神 while they were at home.鈥�
Of course, migrating users to 探花大神 while they were working from home was not without risk. If something went wrong during the process, they could potentially lock remote users out of the company鈥檚 systems and wouldn鈥檛 be able to send anyone to help physically.
We designed the migration from an employee experience perspective, which proved successful as we didn鈥檛 encounter any issues. We took a lot of risks, but we found the perfect flow, which allows us to deploy 探花大神 in any scenario. I know it sounds too good to be true, but it isn鈥檛.
Idan Mashaal, Director of Cybersecurity
Endpoint management on a global scale
Thanks to 探花大神, Plus500 is able to easily manage users in countries across the world, including Australia, Cyprus, Singapore, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
鈥淟et’s say I need to push something, a policy. We found a bug in some tool that we’re using and we need to push a registry key to fix it,鈥� Mashaal explained. 鈥淵ou just click a button and that鈥檚 it. Thank you very much, we’ll talk later, it’s done.鈥�
Looking ahead, any new subsidiary Plus500 acquires will be onboarded to 探花大神 right away.
Custom policies
The Plus500 team has particularly enjoyed 探花大神鈥檚 flexibility, which enables them to easily create and push custom policies.
鈥淲hen we onboarded, it was very easy to start using our own scripts using 探花大神 command runners,鈥� Mashaal explained. 鈥淚t made our Windows build super, super, super easy.鈥�
One day, the team noticed an interesting bug where someone synced a file with a long path in Google Drive, and users couldn鈥檛 see it on Windows because the path was too long. Plus500 was able to solve this problem 鈥� and ensure it wouldn鈥檛 happen again 鈥� with custom policies.
鈥淲e said, 鈥榊ou know what? Let鈥檚 be proactive. We鈥檙e just going to push it as a policy for all our computers because we don鈥檛 want to be bothered with that issue again. So we created a custom policy, saved it, pushed it, and forgot about it.鈥�
Improved security
In the age of remote work, Mashaal knew he had to take proactive steps to keep company data and property protected. To this end, he wanted to ensure all employee devices were encrypted. Using custom policies in 探花大神, he was able to make that happen.
鈥淲e got our report back saying certain computers can鈥檛 be encrypted because they鈥檙e too old,鈥� Mashaal said. 鈥淪o instead of changing and choosing computers by date, I鈥檓 now replacing computers that I can鈥檛 encrypt.鈥�
Plus500 also uses 探花大神鈥檚 multi-factor authentication (MFA) capabilities across Google instances, adding another layer of security to user identities.
Successful Merger and Acquisition Using 探花大神
In July 2021, Plus500 announced that its of U.S.-based Cunningham was complete. According to Mashaal, 探花大神 played a pivotal role throughout the process.
We did a merger and acquisition, and 探花大神 was a very important part of it. We were able to manage all the servers and desktops of the company we purchased in a way that ticked all the boxes of compliance and cybersecurity. When you do an acquisition, there are challenges and risks. Thanks to 探花大神, we were able to make a big headache small.
Idan Mashaal, Director of Cybersecurity
A final comment that Mashaal wanted to add:
鈥淲e鈥檙e using every feature the platform can provide.鈥�
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