Eczacibasi builds a modern, secure manufacturing base with Palo Alto Networks

The Turkish word Eczacibasi translates as ‘chief pharmacist’– a title given to the group’s founder 80 years ago, in recognition of his efforts to improve health in his community. Today, Eczacibasi is one of Turkey’s leading industrial groups – comprising 46 companies, more than 12,000 employees, and US$1.08 billion in revenue (2021).

Core sectors range from construction, consumer goods, and healthcare, to technology, natural resources, and property development – all of which need protection from a wide range of advanced security threats.

One of Eczacibasi’s initial challenges was to ensure mobile users could connect safely to their internet, cloud, and data centre applications. For example, until recently, users in more than a dozen Eczacibasi sites were connected by POP location services to a data centre in Germany – a complex, inflexible, and risky process. “Users had access to the Web with limited controls. It was not so easy to tell who was accessing which site in detail,” says Omer Erdem, Cybersecurity Manager, Eczacibasi.

Eczacibasi is deploying digital technology at pace across its 12 European factories, and having found its operational technology (OT) to be in cyberattackers’ cross hairs more and more frequently, had to quickly secure the OT controlling industrial assets, processes, and events.

The challenges didn’t end there. The firewall platform used for web access at the Istanbul headquarters and remote offices was nearing end of support/life. “Old-fashioned network security solutions have limited application controls,” says Erdem. “It was not a next-generation firewall platform, so we had deployed another IPS solution to complete the picture. Although these two different solutions complemented each other, both brought some security and operational risks.”

So why choose Palo Alto Networks? Erdem explains: “Palo Alto Networks outperformed all the shortlisted vendors in almost many respects. It was better in terms of security features and functions. Top in terms of traffic throughput and operations. And of course, great references in so many analyst reports.”

Eczacibasi has deployed the connected Palo Alto Networks portfolio across clouds and networks to enable secure digital transformation. Visibility, trusted intelligence, and automation help this complex manufacturing organisation advance securely.

• Network security for a hybrid workforce: The initial implementation was a cloud-delivered security platform. Prisma Access Cloud Secure Web Gateway provides Eczacibasi employees with remote access to all privileged web- and non-web-based applications and data, while reducing the risk of data breaches and providing an exceptional end-user experience. Prisma Access protects the hybrid workforce with the superior security of ZTNA 2.0 while providing exceptional user experiences from a unified, cloud-native security product. In addition, Panorama network security management centralises policy management across all Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFW) and Prisma Access. Panorama saves time and reduces complexity by managing network security through a single pane of glass.
  “Prisma Access transforms the security of our web accesses,” says Erdem. “More than 1,000 people in six countries are benefiting from consistent, easier cloud-delivered security. Also, for operations, we use Panorama network security management to centralise policy management, saving time and reducing complexity.”
• OT security: Eczacibasi factories in Turkey are now live on a Palo Alto Networks ML-Powered NGFW network security platform. A firewall in each factory analyses all traffic within a VLAN, significantly reducing the ability of malware to move laterally across the network. This microsegmentation provides the OT network with the level of security that it needs, without impacting network performance. It also gives them visibility and control of every application and function of the OT controls – unlike traditional port-based firewalls. Being able to restrict a particular application to ‘read only’ gives unprecedented control in OT environments.
  “OT traffic is different to the usual traffic you see on the standard network, but using the application-aware NGFW, we can identify and easily segment the network based on OT application protocols,” says Erdem.
• Internal operational security: Eczacibasi also uses the Palo Alto Networks ML-Powered NGFW with CloudDelivered Security Services (CDSS) to underpin web security at headquarters and subsidiaries. More than 5,000 users rely on the network security platform to provide broad threat coverage at the internet edge.
  “There are two standout features on our firewall deployment,” says Erdem. “First, Threat Prevention – which stops known threats, like exploits, malware, and command and control (C2). Second, The Application Command Control (ACC) with App-ID gives our team a complete view of all applications and services accessing the internet, regardless of the port or protocol.”