Mearra shifts from reactive security to predictive and continuous control

Key Results

• Deliver real-time visibility and adaptive protection with Fastly.

• Automate mitigation to reduce intervention and focus on innovation.

• Deploy and test strategies instantly to maintain services.

• Safeguard 99.9% uptime across platforms during disruptions.

• Manage threats by balancing security and accessibility for AI traffic.

The challenge

Mearra is a business transformation boutique and digital solutions partner that designs and delivers mission-critical platforms in Europe. Its clients include global enterprises as well as public sector organizations. Any disruption to this infrastructure or public services can have huge impacts on the local economy and communities. Mearra’s reputation is built on the security, transparency, uptime, and resilience it consistently delivers.

It’s not just the complexity of their client’s operations that can cause headaches. It’s also the fact that Mearra increasingly finds itself operating on the digital frontline of a volatile regional landscape, along with the majority of its clients. 

Rapid advances in technology as well as geopolitics make maintaining a consistent level of protection increasingly challenging. As a lean team managing complex enterprise demands, Mearra's previous DDoS mitigation relied on origin-level rate limiting. The approach worked - but required hands-on response from senior engineers whenever volumetric attacks hit. Without edge-level filtering or traffic fingerprinting capabilities, every significant incident pulled specialist resources away from client delivery and created operational pressure across the business. 

The solution  

Real-time threat visibility  

Fastly’s Next-Gen WAF and edge platform gives Mearra immediate visibility into traffic behavior, attack patterns, and anomalies across client environments. The team can analyze requests in real time, identify threats as they emerge, and apply mitigation strategies near-instantly. This has significantly improved response times and enabled Mearra to operate with a far more proactive security posture.  

Programmable security controls  

Mearra is able to tailor security policies to different client environments and threat profiles using Fastly’s programmable edge architecture. Instead of relying on static, opaque rule sets, the team adapts protections dynamically while managing multiple environments through API-driven workflows. This flexibility allows security to integrate directly into existing development and operational processes without slowing delivery.  

Rapid mitigation at the edge  

Mearra can deploy and test mitigation strategies quickly without disrupting live services. During active incidents, the team can instantly apply rules, adjust policies, and whitelist legitimate traffic where required. 

Fastly has also provided virtual patching capabilities during major vulnerabilities, allowing Mearra to secure services immediately while remediation work carried on.  

Low-touch security operations  

The move to Fastly has significantly reduced operational overhead for the agency. Many threats are now mitigated automatically, while protections can be reused and adapted over time. Security no longer requires constant manual intervention or large-scale incident responses. Mearra’s teams can now spend more time focused on development, innovation and client delivery.  

Real-world resilience  

Mearra's approach has been tested across both public and private sector environments, from municipalities facing coordinated attacks to enterprises running mission-critical platforms. In each case, the team was able to identify malicious traffic patterns in real time, apply mitigation strategies at the edge and maintain service availability without disruption to end users.  

The platform also proved valuable during a critical React vulnerability that caused widespread disruption across the internet. While some providers introduced overly aggressive protections that triggered outages, Mearra maintained stability and control by using Fastly’s virtual patching and flexible rule management capabilities.  

Adapting to evolving threats  

As AI-driven traffic and automated bots become more common, Mearra is refining how it manages access and security at the edge. Fastly enables the team to distinguish between beneficial and malicious bot activity, helping balance strong protection with visibility in AI-driven search and discovery. Rather than simply blocking traffic, Mearra can manage access intelligently based on evolving behavior and risk.  

Key takeaways  

By evolving from traditional incident management to programmable, real-time protection, Mearra has strengthened how it delivers security across high-risk enterprise environments. The partnership with Fastly enables Mearra to automate complex mitigation workflows, free up specialized internal engineering teams and confidently safeguard its 99.9% uptime standard across client platforms. 

Offloading the majority of requests to the edge has also reduced infrastructure strain and improved the efficiency of high-traffic services. Combined with real-time visibility and rapid mitigation capabilities, Mearra can respond to threats faster while maintaining uninterrupted digital experiences for clients and users.  

For an organization balancing enterprise-scale demands with a lean operating model, they provide the resilience, flexibility, and operational efficiency needed to support long-term growth in an increasingly complex threat landscape. 

Read more on how Mearra mitigates DDoS threats to ensure smooth and continuous operations.