Keeping websites and applications fast, secure, and available is straightforward when traffic is steady, networks are stable, and dependencies behave. The real challenge comes when attacks or sudden surges hit. That’s when performance falters, users leave, and revenue is lost.
The ASEAN Challenge: When Growth Meets Risk
Imagine running a SaaS or ecommerce platform from Jakarta. Traffic surges from Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia. But within moments, response times crawl from 50ms to seconds. Basic security and authentication systems buckle under the load and users start to bounce and abandon the site entirely. What began as a successful web service quickly turns into a nightmare at regional scale. In practice, this scenario plays out across Southeast Asia, and it isn’t about surges in traffic or usage.
The region’s rapid digital growth has made it a prime target for cybercrime that is directly impeding performance. According to reports, organisations across Southeast Asia faced an average of 3,513 attacks per week in 2025 – nearly twice the global average. Indonesia and Vietnam recorded the highest attack volumes, averaging at 6,640 and 5,727 weekly attacks per organisation respectively. The intensity of these incidents underscores how attractive the region has become for threat actors.
Traditional security tools often make the problem worse by slowing performance in the name of security. In these maturing mobile-first markets, performance is as critical as security because user experience is increasingly tied with business survival.
The Performance-Security Trade-off Is Very Real
High attack volumes and a large mobile-first user base demand enterprise-grade security. But traditional security solutions often incur performance penalties by adding 200 to 400ms latency routing traffic through distant servers. They introduce delays through additional security processing and struggle with varied last-mile conditions across Southeast Asia.
MaxiSafe’s Edge-First Security With Built-in Acceleration
Instead of separating delivery and protection, MaxiSafe integrates both at the network edge. This enables content acceleration and threat inspection to be processed simultaneously.
CDN Acceleration + Cloud WAAP
Where delivery and security are split across vendors, traffic leaves the delivery network for inspection before returning to origin. MaxiSafe eliminates that inefficiency by conducting security inspection during content delivery, in a single pass, so protection doesn’t come at the cost of speed.
It also uses content caching tailored to the region. It caches content assets like product images which can substantially reduce duplicate origin reads (often ~70% on read-heavy workloads) and maintains real-time threat protection.
Global Load Balancing Across ASEAN
MaxiSafe’s global load balancing goes beyond basic traffic distribution. It runs on on-net edge servers within Tier-1 ISP networks and major peering points to process traffic at the edge, near to users. This keeps requests on local, best possible routes so sites and apps stay fast.
During seasonal traffic spikes, traffic can surge 20-30x normal levels and affects performance. MaxiSafe’s intelligent routing helps keep response times within target ranges. In addition, it supports HTTP/2 and HTTP/3which allow 40% faster page loads and reduced data usage through header compression.
Scaling Across Markets
Most web operations start with a single domain but quickly expand to multiple domains for different countries, APIs, mobile apps, and payment systems. MaxiSafe supports multi-domain setups with shared policies and per-market overrides, so controls stay consistent as you grow.
Designed with performance in mind, MaxiSafe comes in four plans that pair QPS (Queries Per Second) capacity with delivery volume, so teams can choose an appropriate starting point. If demand briefly exceeds your plan’s QPS, requests continue to be served and protected rather than throttled. Billing uses a fair-usage approach based on 95th-percentile QPS, so short spikes do not determine the whole bill – no bill shock.
Performance-Security Integration Matters
To succeed, businesses must deliver fast, secure experiences and assume a proactive security stance. MaxiSafe’s edge-first approach combines WAAP security features with performance by design.
Ready to turn security into a speed advantage? Discover how MaxiSafe delivers secure, peak performance built for Southeast Asia businesses. Explore our MaxiSafe price plans & start risk-free today, cancel anytime!
