Cybersecurity company modernizes mission-critical identity platform to reduce risk

A leading cybersecurity company responsible for securing over 60 million digital identities faced growing performance and scalability risks in its mission-critical identity platform. Together, we modernized the frontend without disrupting users, delivering a scalable foundation and a unified design system built for long-term change. The new experience has significantly improved usability and given developers a reusable component library that accelerated delivery.

Our work involved

• System architecture modernization
• Frontend development roadmap
• Reusable UI component system
• Hands-on training and knowledge transfer

Impact

Beneath the technical challenges of application modernization lies a bigger picture of business goals, user needs, and long-term ambitions. When your organization is responsible for securing over 60 million digital identities, that complexity becomes impossible to ignore.

A leading cybersecurity company faced performance issues in its platform due to an aging frontend architecture. This is a classic scenario that, if left unchecked, can escalate from technical debt into a broader operational risk.

Rather than waiting for that tipping point, the company’s leadership took a proactive approach and partnered with Modus Create as one integrated team to address the problem. What followed was a disciplined, well-timed effort that addressed immediate challenges while laying the groundwork for long-term modernization.

Challenge

When legacy architecture becomes a business risk

When your platform safeguards millions of digital identities, stability and clarity are non-negotiable. The company’s aging frontend architecture was beginning to undermine both, introducing performance issues and inconsistencies that put user confidence—and long-term scalability—at risk. Addressing the problem early became a strategic imperative, not just a technical one.

The company’s frontend, built on legacy technologies Ember.js and Backbone.js, had reached its practical limits, creating two major issues:

• Inconsistent and erratic user experience: Slow load times, unclear language, and a lack of visual guidance made it difficult for users to navigate the platform and interpret critical data. The complexity of the review process wasn’t matched with adequate in-product support, leading many users to abandon tasks in the middle of their workflows.
• Technical debt hindered fixes: Although the company was aware of all the performance issues and their implications, technical debt prevented any meaningful progress. It was expensive to develop new features and maintain the existing architecture. The reliance on legacy frameworks also complicated hiring, as newer developers were less inclined to work with outdated technologies.

Solution

Phased modernization without user disruption

One principle guided the entire effort: modernization could not come at the expense of user disruption. With that alignment in place, we moved forward with a phased approach, rather than a risky big-bang migration.

Building a modern frontend foundation

We worked in two-week sprints to build a new React single-page application (SPA) using TypeScript, creating a foundation for long-term modernization. This allowed us to enable faster iteration and deliver a more responsive user experience, all without forcing disruptive backend changes upfront.

We built and customized a comprehensive starter kit that included everything needed for enterprise-grade development, including state management, unit testing, routing, form handling, and schema validation. This approach helped establish consistent patterns and best practices from day one.

The initial phase focused on modernizing the company’s access governance capability. This gave us a controlled environment to validate the architecture, deliver immediate value, and build confidence across stakeholders. That early validation proved critical in enabling subsequent phases of modernization.

Our feature-flag approach ensured new and legacy experiences could coexist safely. This incremental strategy eliminated disruption for existing users. Instead of jarring changes, users experienced a steady stream of performance improvements all around them.

Strengthening the frontend architecture

While training and coaching play an important role, they can’t sit outside the work. The approach has to be built into the solution itself. As part of the modernization, we shifted the frontend to a component-based model, changing how it is built and maintained over time.

This change went beyond a visual refresh. By introducing reusable, consistent building blocks, teams gained a clearer, more predictable way to work. A shared UI component library brought consistency and reduced the effort required to deliver new features across the organization.

Impact

Faster performance, zero downtime, & reduced risk

When modernization succeeds, there are no stakeholder tradeoffs to manage. Users don’t lose stability for speed. Developers don’t inherit complexity in exchange for change. That’s exactly what the company’s new React-based frontend delivered.

The shift to a modern frontend delivered immediate, measurable improvements without disrupting the thousands of enterprise users who rely on the platform every day: Page load times improved by 50%. Navigation became clearer. Interaction patterns became consistent. And all of it happened with zero downtime.

Behind the experience, the impact ran deeper. By replacing legacy frontend technologies with a modern architecture, the company reduced long-term risk and made it easier to attract and onboard developers fluent in today’s tools. A reusable, accessibility-first UI component library simplified development and ensured consistency, turning what began as a single modernization effort into an architectural standard for future work.

Most telling, the work didn’t end at launch. The company adopted the architectural patterns, development practices, and release discipline established during the engagement as an internal standard. This will help developers secure user identities without slowing down new releases and features.

The outcome extended beyond performance gains. By modernizing the frontend without disrupting users, the company reduced long-term risk while increasing its ability to adapt. The engagement established a durable foundation—one that enables teams to deliver change faster, maintain trust at scale, and evolve the platform without repeating past mistakes.