Product Scaling: Breach Detection System for Shipping Containers

After parting ways with previous contractors, the client sought PSA’s expertise to refine their breach detection product – used by port authorities and shippers to protect cargo on international voyages. Planning to enter key global markets and handle growing demand, they needed to maintain uninterrupted monitoring regardless of cargo location or server strain. Tight deadlines were a top priority, driven by the product's active use and partner commitments.

Ensure frictionless user growth of the breach detection system powering a vast network of IoT devices deployed globally.

Create a flexible and secure platform for smooth operation of the shipping container monitoring service under fluctuating loads.

The PSA DevOps team leveraged best practices to build a robust, cloud-based infrastructure from scratch in just 30 days, enabling real-time monitoring of widely distributed shipping containers. Our engineers utilized the CI/CD (Continuous Integration/ Continuous Delivery) approach for the client to warrant the time, risk, cost, and labor intensity reduction with app development.

Deployed in Azure, the PSA-built Kubernetes cluster ensures effortless global deployment of the product with reduced complexity and operational costs through the features provided: 

• Automatic scaling to adapt to traffic load changes

• Flexible client-server interactions, and licensing management

• Enhanced security for storing keys, passwords, and certificates

• Highly-availability cloud storage for diverse object types

• Automated database management and traffic distribution

• Simplified updates and troubleshooting 

We’ve leveraged our partner’s Tartabit technology to smoothly bridge IoT devices to the cloud, as well as Telit technology to obtain device data via their GSM modules.

To ensure high security for both instrastruncure and development processes, PSA team implemented the following measures:

• A private Kubernetes cluster and endpoints for sensitive services

• Protection of incoming traffic and infrastructure management

• Regular updates for virtual machine and operating system 

• Role-based access control for Cloud and DevOps platforms

For the service to keep operating without issue, the PSA team migrated the on-prem setup to the newly created Azure infrastructure ensuring no data loss from already running IoT devices. Given the expanded attack surface, we performed rigorous vulnerability tests for each component to validate security.  

As a result, our client gained an elastic, resilient, and highly secure shipping container monitoring platform capable of scaling seamlessly to accommodate an influx of users. 

PSA continues to support the product by handling network, connectivity, and server issues while optimizing infrastructure and component deployment processes to further enhance system stability and performance.

• Cloud Infrastructure Development
• CI/CD Pipeline Implementation
• Infrastructure Migration
• Vulnerability Testing
• Ongoing Support