Digital Sovereignty for Critical Infrastructure in Retail
A milestone for digital independence: How EHI and Interlake are future-proofing the national EC card blocking system through cloud migration to STACKIT.
Imagine your wallet is stolen. The first step, of course, is to block your cards by calling the central emergency number. True to the motto “problem identified, problem solved,” this seems to at least eliminate the risk of unauthorized charges by the thief. Unfortunately, however, that’s not the end of it.
What very few people know: While the bank blocks the PIN process due to the lock, the backdoor for the SEPA direct debit system remains open. Criminals can thus continue to make purchases at your expense using nothing more than a forged signature.
A far-sighted police commissioner from Lower Saxony recognized this dangerous security loophole over 20 years ago. He provided the decisive impetus for a solution that is now indispensable to the German retail sector. The EHI Retail Institute took up this challenge and developed KUNO. As a national EC card blocking system, it has since formed the invisible safety net between the police and the business sector to effectively stop direct debit fraud.
To ensure maximum digital independence and the protection of highly sensitive customer and police data, the EHI Retail Institute and IT specialist Interlake now wanted to take a decisive step forward and migrate to a sovereign cloud infrastructure.
KUNO is a nationwide system that protects retailers from payment fraud involving stolen cards. Every day, highly sensitive account information and personal data are exchanged between police departments, the EHI, and retail network operators. The complexity of Germany’s federal system, with 16 different state networks, places enormous demands on the interfaces and the stability of the infrastructure.
“Now that KUNO is celebrating its 20th anniversary, we want to ensure that we are well-positioned for the next ten years,” explains Marco Atzberger, a member of the executive board at the EHI Retail Institute, regarding the need to migrate the system to a modern cloud environment.
The challenge: Under no circumstances could there be any interruptions during the migration, as the system must be available at all times when stores are open. It was unthinkable that criminals could exploit a technical failure for their own purposes. Together with Interlake, the EHI therefore sought a partner capable of performing the migration without disrupting operations and guaranteeing uncompromising data sovereignty in accordance with German and European law. Furthermore, the provider needed to be able to deliver modern cloud technologies such as Kubernetes for improved scalability.
EHI and Interlake ultimately found the ideal partner in STACKIT. By switching to STACKIT’s sovereign infrastructure, KUNO was completely re-engineered from a technological standpoint. “STACKIT is the optimal solution for us because it meets both of our requirements: a reliable solution with high availability while also complying with German and European data protection laws,” said Marco Atzberger regarding the decision to choose STACKIT.
Interlake took on the role of architect in the “engine room.” The team migrated the entire application from .NET to .NET Core and now runs it on a state-of-the-art Kubernetes cluster. Sven Slazenger, Managing Director of Interlake, generally views STACKIT as the best choice for critical infrastructure matters.
“STACKIT provides us with exactly the toolkit we absolutely need for German SMEs. In that sense, it was really our first choice when we asked ourselves: Where can we operate critical infrastructure in a stable manner over the long term?”
The seamless migration to STACKIT ensured KUNO’s uninterrupted operational readiness at every stage of the project. For the German retail sector, this means: Reliability in fraud prevention remained intact without a single second of downtime, while the system’s technical performance and scalability were massively enhanced.
The combination of Interlake’s deep process expertise and STACKIT’s robust cloud infrastructure has created a digital foundation tailored specifically to KUNO’s critical requirements. This ensures that the national blocking system meets the high security standards of government agencies and retailers without compromise—both today and in the future. And thanks to KUNO, you no longer have to worry about unauthorized withdrawals if you lose your wallet!
With the successful migration of KUNO, the EHI Retail Institute, Interlake, and STACKIT have proven that even highly sensitive, critical infrastructures in Germany can now be operated confidently and with future-proofing. “Having this independence—knowing that we can simply operate this reliably within a regionally manageable area without anyone interfering—is becoming an increasingly important issue, especially for these critical applications,” summarizes Sven Slazenger.
The project thus marks a decisive turning point for digital self-determination in retail. Furthermore, it makes it abundantly clear: Digital sovereignty is today’s most secure foundation for tomorrow’s innovations.
By operating on STACKIT in Germany, KUNO complies with strict European data protection regulations. This ensures the long-term protection of highly sensitive customer and police data.
By switching to a Kubernetes-based architecture, KUNO has been technologically modernized. The system is now significantly more flexible and can seamlessly and cost-effectively scale up at any time to meet rising retail demands, such as peak loads during the holiday season.
The migration reduced technological dependence on non-European platforms. KUNO now benefits from a self-sufficient infrastructure that ensures maximum availability for the German retail sector.
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