Overview

Since 2020, Ascend has provided BASF, a global leader in the chemical industry, with online hosting services for websites we maintain in partnership with other suppliers. Now in 2023, Ascend host over 25 distinct websites across various regions and domains for BASF. With such a vast digital footprint, the paramount concerns were and still remain ensuring consistent availability, redundancy, and utmost security for these platforms.

In partnership with BASF, we architected a hosting environment designed for resilience and scalability. Instead of relying on a single hosting server, the websites are distributed across multiple servers, ensuring that even in the event of a singular server failure, the remaining websites would continue unaffected.

Every website is fortified with HTTPS encryption, ensuring data integrity and confidentiality as it moves between the user’s web browser and the website server. But our commitment to security didn’t end there. Recognising the sensitive nature of some data, additional encryption measures were implemented to secure data at rest. This move was made to ensure that, even if unauthorised access were somehow achieved, the data would remain unreadable without the appropriate decryption keys.

The holistic hosting solution drastically improved the reliability and security during a rapid expansion of BASF’s digital portfolio. Unplanned or unexpected downtime instances remain at zero since the solution was provisioned. The dual-layered security approach, encompassing both in-transit and at-rest encryption, bolstered necessary confidence in data safety.

BASF could now promise its global clientele a seamless and secure online experience as they endured and emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic, further enhancing its reputation as a leader in its domain.

What we did