Fragmented tools delay remediation efforts

Modulus is a cloud payment processing platform that empowers high-transacting organizations to gain control over their payment data. It relies on high uptime, strict security compliance, and real-time visibility across a complex, PCI DSS-compliant cloud infrastructure. Every transaction processed by the platform requires speed, reliability, and traceability. Even a few seconds of downtime or a security gap can lead to lost revenue and reputational risk.

Prior to adopting Datadog, Modulus had a fragmented monitoring and observability setup, with different tools for Kubernetes cluster monitoring, application performance monitoring, code scanning, and on-call and incident response. “Although these tools individually provided great value to us, they also required constant integration efforts, created visibility silos, and slowed down our ability to respond to issues,” says Mary Joy Oliveros, Head of Platform Engineering at Modulus. “We were dealing with fragmented visibility, switching between the multiple dashboards and tools to correlate performance issues, security risks, and alerts.”

This led to delayed remediation as teams lacked a single view to detect and fix issues before production, with code scanning separate from application performance monitoring and alerts. There were also significant compliance and security concerns. As a PCI DSS-regulated company, maintaining secure pipelines with real-time monitoring of code changes, infrastructure, and transactions was a challenge across multiple tools. Meanwhile, operating in an AWS environment required strict governance and compliance due to AWS Control Tower guardrails. Although essential for security, this level of protection made the integration of third-party platforms more complex.

Real-time insights removes the guesswork

Through adoption of Datadog, Modulus was able to bring together all aspects of its monitoring, security, and incident response into a single, streamlined environment. This consolidation has improved visibility across systems, enhanced collaboration between teams, and reduced the time required to detect and resolve issues. Modulus can now proactively identify risks, ensure system reliability, and strengthen its overall security posture.

“Before Datadog, monitoring meant noise and blind spots. Today, we have real-time clarity across every service,” says Oliveros. “For a global payment infrastructure like Modulus, Datadog is far more than a monitoring tool – it is our reliability guardrail, compliance enabler, and single source of operational truth.”

Datadog’s centralized application performance monitoring and infrastructure monitoring provided Modulus with real-time tracing across services. It allowed teams to detect bottlenecks in payment transaction flows instantly. “The platform delivers a single pane of glass, with real-time alerts, anomaly detection, and automated incident workflows all in one place, eliminating the need for our teams to jump between multiple tools and configurations,” says Oliveros.

Modulus has integrated Datadog’s Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) and Application Security Monitoring (ASM) which provide continuous visibility into threats. This includes API misuse and suspicious login attempts, which is critical for protecting payment data. Datadog’s Synthetic Monitoring and Real-User Monitoring (RUM) ensure teams can validate end-to-end transaction uptime, customer experience, and service level agreements.

The new integration has also allowed for early intervention. Datadog’s Continuous Integration (CI) Visibility scans code and dependencies before deployment, flagging vulnerabilities and compliance risks early in the pipeline.

Real-time visibility drives operational excellence

Through unified alerting and the ability to detect performance issues and find their root causes, Modulus has improved uptime and reliability. Their Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) has been reduced by more than 40%, while payment transaction failures are now detected in seconds instead of minutes.

One significant challenge in adopting a third-party service for Modulus was ensuring security and compliance, as they operate under PCI DSS regulations within a strictly governed AWS environment. “The issue was not with our security posture, which is intentionally rigorous, but rather with aligning AWS/Datadog integration to those high standards,” says Oliveros.

“Despite these challenges, our team was able to resolve the integration successfully without weakening any controls, proving that best-in-class security and modern observability can coexist.”

With code vulnerabilities now detected in pre-production through Datadog CI Visibility, Modulus has a reduced risk of PCI DSS non-compliance. Meanwhile, real-time threat detection for APIs and infrastructure has prevented potential breaches. In addition, Modulus’ operational efficiency was significantly improved by the Datadog integration, and it eliminated the need to maintain four separate platforms, with teams now operating from a single pane of glass, reducing context switching and improving collaboration. This consolidation also lowered overall costs by eliminating redundant tools and licenses. “Most importantly, even though AWS Control Tower’s guardrails initially created integration hurdles with Datadog, our security-first approach and technical expertise ensured that we implemented the solution without lowering our defenses,” says Oliveros.