The initial setup was pretty straightforward, to be honest. We had a test environment where we conducted the Proof of Concept (POC). We shared our DNS IP addresses, and the resolution IP addresses of our systems with the Reblaze team. This directed all traffic to Reblaze first, which performed traffic scanning before allowing it to reach our network. 

So we simply had to change the IP addresses. We did need to purchase some certificates because most of our traffic was encrypted, and Reblaze acted as a man-in-the-middle. We obtained the certificates from LicenseScript, which is free for the test environment. After that, everything started working smoothly.

The initial setup process is quite straightforward. Its complexity largely depends on the intricacies of your platform. If your platform spans multiple sites across the globe, requiring configuration of multiple instances and traffic routing, it can become more intricate. From our experience, even in companies with extensive platforms, the configuration process remains relatively simple. Once the instances are spun up and the initial configurations are in place, you can use their console application to set up your site or sites for traffic management. This involves configuring the sites and uploading SSL certificates. Even for those not well-versed in the intricacies of networking layers and rules, the out-of-the-box configurations already provide solid protection.

The initial setup was very complex, but because of our side. We had very old platforms and our programming staff wasn't strict about implementing normal programming procedures. So we had to do a lot of whitelisting and a lot of changes in our code to be compliant and to have minimal security on our side.

For example, they still support ASP websites; not even .NET. We needed to whitelist a lot of things, such as moving parameters on the URL. That's something you don't do anymore in coding.

Our deployment took around seven to eight months, but we had something like 250 websites. It was not one website. Where CNN, which is one of the biggest, major websites in the world, has one major website that's called "cnn.com," we had more than 200 websites in ten or 15 different technologies. We had WordPress, Drupal, PHP, our native PHP, .NET, ASP, SharePoint and more that we had to support. It's a unique environment and that's why we were looking for a solution.

What helped us a lot is their support team. That is the major benefit of Reblaze; not the technology, not the product — the support team. That's what we were paying for.

Our implementation strategy was to move a couple of websites. We didn't have a QA site or pre-production site for all of our systems. So we had to move a lot of our environments in real-time, in a monitoring mode, and see what was going to be blocked. We then whitelisted that and moved into production and saw what was being blocked for our user.

On our IT side, three people — not full time, of course — were involved in the setup. And from our programming environment, there were about 20 different people, but not at the same time. From Reblaze's side, we worked with three to four different guys. Not more than that because they knew our environment.

In terms of day-to-day maintenance, for load-balancing, caching, and supporting the whole system, we required about 30 to 35 percent of one full-time job. The maintenance is not low. Our QA team, of course, were also users of Reblaze. They knew how to work with the system and how to configure the system because they worked on testing the websites with Reblaze.

Reblaze manages the solution so we didn't need to follow which version we were on. It's a bit different than a normal IT product where you need to upgrade it. It was a managed service for us. In our case, it was in our private cloud. That was a bit different than for other customers, but for us, it was on our private cloud.

We were the very first commercial customer of Reblaze in the world. The initial setup was extremely easy. It took an hour to set it up and get it to the point that it was active and blocking malicious traffic.

The initial setup was fairly straightforward. Instead of advertising our DNS names, we advertise Reblaze's with our DNS provider, so it all goes directly to Reblaze. We have had to do a little bit of troubleshooting here and there for SEO and a few other things, but that was fairly minor — things like tweaking headers slightly with some code.

It took us two to three months to get it running. It usually does take a little bit to get used to how the product reacts and works.

The initial setup was very straightforward and extremely user-friendly. When I had an emergency, I just called them and they came and installed it in a matter of hours. So it wasn't long before our system was up and running and preventive. Three days tops. 

The initial setup was very simple. All we had to do is tell them our main risks and what we are aiming for and they provided the solution and built everything from scratch. We told them about the architecture of our service, our application architecture — that we need to get traffic from here to there — and please provide us with the right solution. 

The deployment took one day. The implementation strategy was really up to them.

The service is on a cloud. They published the URL and we just connected it. It doesn't need to be installed. 

The initial setup is quite a straightforward process although it does take some time.