HONG KONG, April 25, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Migrating to the Cloud is quickly becoming an industry standard for the financial industry as it enables institutions to achieve greater performance, digital capabilities, operational efficiencies and cost management. Tencent Cloud, the cloud business of global technology company Tencent, today announced it has helped Hong Kong’s Airstar Bank to successfully migrate its entire operations onto the Cloud, to facilitate more agility for their digital bank services and operations. Airstar Bank has been operating steadily on the cloud for over 100 days, witnessing significant improvements to the greater speed, stability and security that they are able to provide to their digital banking customers.

Airstar Bank is one of the first digital banks to be granted a banking license in Hong Kong and it continues to grow in market presence today. This has placed significant technological demands on Airstar Bank, as it needs to scale up quickly while balancing the high costs and resources that are required to support its growing operations.

In December 2023, Airstar Bank partnered with Tencent Cloud to initiate its cloud business migration plan, which will see all aspects of its business operations housed on the cloud. Tencent Cloud drew from its own extensive experience in cloud migration, formulating detailed technical plans and migration strategies to ensure a safe, smooth, and efficient transition to the cloud, while adhering to strict industry regulations and standards at all times.

Liming Hu, Vice President of Tencent Cloud, said: “Migrating to the cloud is the optimal solution for the digital transformation of the financial industry, and Airstar Bank’s comprehensive cloud migration reflects its forward-looking approach to digitalization. Tencent Cloud is honored to assist Airstar Bank in smoothly and efficiently migrating to the cloud, helping to provide more diverse financial products and services to customers, improve customer satisfaction, and promote a virtuous cycle that enables rapid business development. In the future, Tencent Cloud will continue to focus on fintech and cloud services, offering leading digital banking solutions to financial institutions worldwide and supporting product and business innovation in the financial industry.”

Felix Tao, Chief Technology Officer of Airstar Bank, said: “We are very pleased to partner with Tencent Cloud to successfully and smoothly complete the bank’s cloud migration. We anticipate significant optimization in terms of resource costs and workload as well as the complexity of infrastructure operations and maintenance. As a ‘user-oriented’ digital bank, we remain committed to providing our customers with more diverse products and services. This development not only helps reduce costs and enhance efficiency, accelerating product iteration, but the flexibility and scalability of the new core system will also assist Airstar Bank in dynamically adjusting resources to meet future business expansion and peak customer flow demands. In view of all this, we strive to build a more agile digital bank supported by cloud technology.” 

Airstar Bank adopted a layered architecture design to maintain the highest levels of security, utilizing partition isolation based on its unique business characteristics. Combined with Tencent Cloud’s comprehensive security product capabilities, they built a security protection system at key nodes to safeguard bank data comprehensively. The bank’s business data retrieval is also enhanced by integrating content acceleration and edge security through an edge security acceleration platform.

The financial industry, especially the banking sector, has very high requirements for the stability and security of IT systems. In terms of disaster recovery architecture, Tencent Cloud designed a multi-layer business disaster recovery architecture system for Airstar Bank, covering traffic access, business applications, and data storage. The overall system achieved a cross-AZ dual-active disaster recovery architecture, ensuring second-level rapid switching in the event of extreme failures. Relying on Tencent Cloud’s observability platform, they monitored the operational status of all business nodes in real time.

During the cloud migration process, phased data migration proved to be critical. Each stage of the process needed to be completed quickly within a limited time window to ensure that various bank businesses were not affected. Tencent Cloud provided the tools and expert services to help Airstar Bank adapt and implement the migration effectively with limited disruptions. During the critical database migration phase, an assessment tool helps to first generate a report, which allows the bank to evaluate its business workload. After completing code refactoring, data synchronization is carried out using Tencent Cloud’s DBbridge migration tool, ultimately switching business traffic to the cloud. The success rate of the overall cloud migration reached 100%, with no occurrence of business fallback or data rollback issues.

After completing the full cloud migration, Airstar Bank has seen significant improvements in high-performance data processing capabilities, along with a reduction in resource costs and the workload and complexity of infrastructure maintenance—estimated to lead to annual cost savings worth millions in the future. Additionally, the business systems can now fully leverage the diverse enterprise-grade commercial products available in the cloud to replace self-built open-source product components, significantly enhancing development efficiency and enabling agile application iterations and rapid responses to market changes.

About Tencent Cloud:

Tencent Cloud, one of the world’s leading cloud companies, is committed to creating innovative solutions to resolve real-world issues and enabling digital transformation for smart industries. Through our extensive global infrastructure, Tencent Cloud provides businesses across the globe with stable and secure industry-leading cloud products and services, leveraging technological advancements such as cloud computing, Big Data analytics, AI, IoT, and network security. It is our constant mission to meet the needs of industries across the board, including the fields of gaming, media and entertainment, finance, healthcare, property, retail, travel, and transportation.

About Airstar Bank:

Airstar Bank is a digital bank in Hong Kong with Xiaomi Corporation and Futu Group as its key shareholders. The Bank upholds the virtue of financial inclusion by making cutting edge digital banking services accessible at our customers’ fingertips. Airstar Bank has become a licensed bank under the Hong Kong Monetary Authority since May 9, 2019.

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SOURCE Tencent Cloud

TAMPA, Fla., April 24, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — EC-Council, a global leader in cybersecurity education and training, and the creators of world-renowned Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH)  credential, is taking a transformative step to reshape the future of digital security. EC-Council has announced the launch of a $100 million investment to drive the development of next-gen technologies aimed to accelerate cybersecurity breakthroughs and strengthen global digital defense.

The investment coupled with EC-Council’s platform support, will boost the next generation of cybersecurity innovation which will redefine the cybersecurity paradigm worldwide. Strategic deployment of the investment will prioritize companies with high growth potential, and which demonstrate exceptional technical innovation, problem-solving capabilities, and tangible impact in strengthening Cybersecurity Defense.

Companies led by EC-Council certified cybersecurity professionals or those that employ EC-Council certified cybersecurity professionals in key technical and leadership roles will be given priority, aligning with EC-Council’s commitment to expertise-driven cybersecurity innovation.

“Our industry stands at a pivotal moment, requiring visionary leadership to counteract an ever-evolving cyber threat landscape,” said Jay Bavisi, Group President, EC-Council. “This initiative is designed to provide not just financial backing but also mentorship, strategic guidance, and global exposure to help these companies create effective security solutions. As a globally trusted cybersecurity brand, we are investing in the future by equipping those who are committed to driving impactful change.”

This initiative builds on EC-Council’s two-decade legacy of shaping the global cybersecurity workforce through education, training, and innovation. Its industry-relevant programs; such as Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) , Certified Network Defender (CND), Certified Chief Information Security Officer (CCISO), and Computer Hacking Forensic Investigator (CHFI) have become gold standards in the field. Supporting this commitment to continuous learning is EC-Council Learning , the World’s Largest Online Cybersecurity Course Library, which offers professionals and institutions access to thousands of curated resources that evolve with the threat landscape.

Further product innovations include CEH powered with AI capabilities,  CPENT AI  an advanced offensive security program featuring real-time AI-driven test environments and The Hackerverse CTF, EC-Council’s immersive cyber range platform that simulates real-world attack scenarios to prepare professionals for live threats.

The goal of EC-Council’s $100 million investment is to ensure that companies in the cybersecurity space with strong technical capabilities and market potential can access capital and resources to accelerate their growth. Companies from any region are encouraged to apply, as EC-Council is committed to creating a global ecosystem of cybersecurity innovation.

With cyberattacks becoming increasingly sophisticated, businesses, governments, and individuals face growing risks. EC-Council’s investment initiative is designed to ensure the companies with best-in-class products, service offerings and capabilities have the resources and platform to reach the users and enterprises who could benefit the most from their solutions.

Bavisi further highlighted the importance of empowering emerging companies, stating: “Innovation is not limited to large global corporations or major tech hubs. With the power of today’s technology, infrastructure and AI, some of the most disruptive cybersecurity solutions are emerging in recent times by highly specialized companies, with the potential to transform the sector and lead to new business models. Our goal is to ensure these companies have the support they need to thrive, regardless of their size or location.”

For more information on how to apply, visit EC-Council’s official website:
https://www.eccouncil.org/supporting-cybersecurity-initiatives/

About EC-Council: 

EC-Council is the creator of the world-renowned Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) program and a leader in cybersecurity education. Founded in 2001, EC-Council’s mission is to provide high-quality training and certifications for cybersecurity professionals to keep organizations safe from cyber threats. EC-Council offers over 200 certifications and degrees in various cybersecurity domains, including forensics, security analysis, threat intelligence, and information security.    

An ISO/IEC 17024 accredited organization, EC-Council has certified over 350,000 professionals worldwide, with clients ranging from government agencies to Fortune 100 companies. EC-Council is the gold standard in cybersecurity certification, trusted by the U.S. Department of Defense, the Army, Navy, Air Force, and leading global corporations.    

For more information, visit: www.eccouncil.org 

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SOURCE EC-Council

SINGAPORE, April 25, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — FOMO Pay, a leading major payment institution headquartered in Singapore, has been invited to join the newly launched Circle Payments Network (CPN) as one of its first design partners globally. As a member of the CPN, FOMO Pay will play a key role in advancing compliant, efficient, and real-time cross-border payments powered by regulated stablecoins.

Introduced by Circle, a global financial technology company and stablecoin market leader, the Circle Payments Network enables financial institutions and businesses to settle cross-border transactions in stablecoins with near-instant settlement. As one of the founding network partners, FOMO Pay will play a key role in the real-time settlement of cross-border payments using stablecoins, helping businesses and institutions transact seamlessly between fiat and stablecoins.

“As a member of the Circle Payments Network, FOMO Pay is proud to work alongside Circle to advance the adoption of compliant and fast stablecoin payments,” said Louis Liu, Founder and CEO of FOMO Pay. “In addition to FOMO Pay’s established local payment and banking rails across Southeast Asia, the Greater Bay Area, the Middle East and North Africa, Europe, and the United States, this collaboration with Circle positions us to support the growing regional demand for stablecoin-powered payments. “

By supporting real-time stablecoin transactions, FOMO Pay continues to help merchants, corporates, and financial institutions streamline cross-border transactions and accelerate trade settlement across markets.

About FOMO Pay

Founded in 2015, FOMO Pay is a Major Payment Institution licensed in Singapore, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The firm has become a leading one-stop digital payment, digital banking, and digital asset solution provider. It is currently building Asia’s fully licensed financial platform, helping institutions and businesses connect between traditional and next-generation financial services. The firm offers its three flagship products:

FOMO Payment – One-stop digital payment solution for merchants, corporates and financial institutionsFOMO iBank – Facilitate businesses’ everyday requirements for transactional banking needsFOMO Treasury – One-stop digital asset services provider bridging Web 2.0 & Web 3.0

Visit www.fomopay.com for more information.

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SOURCE FOMO Pay