Finansbank

Overview

Established in 1987, Finansbank is one of Turkey’s top five largest banks with over 800 billion TL (over $300 billion) in assets, 42 billion TL (about $16 billion) in deposits, and over 8 billion TL (about $3.7 billion) in shareholder equity. This dynamic, multi-award-winning financial institution has nearly 700 branches and over 12,000 employees. Finansbank offers millions of customer deposit accounts, credit cards, loans, investment products, insurance, and other banking products and services. It also delivers online application solutions for banking services as well as via e-Invoice Integration, e-Invoice private service provider, e-Invoice archiving, e-Book application and e-Trade portal. It continually strives to provide creative, swift and easy solutions for the financial needs of its customer through e-Finance subsidiaries.

Finansbank prides itself on providing top-tier personal and commercial financial services to its customers. For Finansbank, its mission is to build successful financial partnerships with all of its stakeholders, whether it is a business, depositor, or shareholder. Its customer-based focus is paying off: Finansbank was recently recognized as the ‘’Best Investment Institution in Turkey’’ by Global Finance magazine.

Challenge

As the leader of Finansbank’s Security Incident Management department, Ahmet Taskeser knows that financial institutions are prime hacking targets for threat actors around the world. It is his responsibility to manage and protect Finansbank’s customer data — including account numbers, credit card numbers and security tokens — against constant cyberattacks and data theft efforts. These data security challenges involve conducting malware analysis, managing fraud detection efforts and deploying effective data theft prevention solutions to counter the inbound and outbound threats that his team faces on a daily basis.

For instance, Taskeser is keenly aware that threat actors are using various inbound attack techniques against Finansbank’s security systems in their attempts to gain access to customer data. Some of these attack techniques include advanced persistent threats (APTs) and phishing emails, among others. These evolving threats pose significant and ongoing risks of data breach to Finansbank.

In addition to these inbound threats, Taskeser knows that he must also guard against outbound threats that can lead to data loss and data theft. Outbound data security is a formidable challenge involving accidental as well as malicious actions by Finansbank employees. He understands that regardless of the source, a successful data breach can have a widespread effect that could not only negatively impact its depositors and financial partners, but can also severely damage - if not destroy - the bank’s brand:

“The most important thing that we are trying to protect is the reputation of Finansbank, which is priceless for us.”
— Ahmet Taskeser

Solution

Due to this wide range of potential external cyberattacks and insider-based data theft, Finansbank required a versatile yet powerful security solution to defend against the evolving external threat landscape as well as effectively address the insider threat. After completing proof-of-concepts with multiple security vendors, Finansbank ultimately chose to deploy Forcepoint DLP. The advantages were clear and compelling:

“With Forcepoint, the solution was much more scalable, had less false positives and fingerprint technologies. We didn’t need to add servers to deploy their security solutions, either. With other competitors’ solutions, we were required to add up to 12 servers. This, coupled with the expertise and exceptional support from the Forcepoint engineers, made the decision to go with Forcepoint very simple for us.”
– Ahmet Taskeser

The Finansbank security team also utilized Forcepoint engineers to install the solution. Their expertise was extremely apparent by showing how quickly the Forcepoint solution was deployed:

“Installation was really great. One engineer came in and after two days everything was ready and we were detecting all incidents on my screen which was unbelievable because it took just two days. Other products we considered were really hard to install and configure. It would take up to two weeks for installation plus one more week for configuration; but for Forcepoint it took just two days, which was unbelievable.”
– Ahmet Taskeser

Results

Finansbank has experienced the benefits of Forcepoint DLP in multiple ways – from improved Insider Threat controls to significant reductions in the resources required to maintain its data security needs. One of the most immediate results has been through the detection and prevention of internal data theft. Taskeser describes an issue they had in which an employee attempted to gain access to data improperly:

“We had an issue with an employee. He was trying to gain access to some customer data but was prevented from doing so using Forcepoint DLP. I wasn’t expecting Forcepoint to detect such a detailed test but it did. My manager and upper management are very happy about this high level of quality from Forcepoint.”
– Ahmet Taskeser

Not only does the solution provide superior data theft prevention, but the management of the solution has been particularly beneficial. The Forcepoint solution has only one interface to manage all policies. This makes it easy for Taskeser to administer or update policies no matter if the user is working on-site or remotely.

Finansbank has experienced a direct, positive financial result by implementing Forcepoint as well:

“Before Forcepoint, we had four employees who were devoted to reviewing highly secure documents before they were sent to auditing companies. Now Forcepoint does the reviewing for us.”
– Ahmet Taskeser

As a high-profile financial institution serving millions of customers and responsible for hundreds of billions of assets, the stakes are high for Finansbank and Taskeser. Protecting its customers' critical data requires advanced Data Theft Prevention that proactively stops inbound and outbound threats as well as preventing data from going where it shouldn’t. This dramatically improved the protection level of their critical data and has allowed Taskeser to more efficiently leverage his security assets as well as raise the security IQ of Finansbank employees.

For Finansbank, Forcepoint's advanced, proactive security lets the company serve its customers with confidence. But it also delivers just a bit more:

“I sleep better at night knowing that our data is secure with Forcepoint.”
– Ahmet Taskeser

Finansbank has relied on Forcepoint security solutions since 2007.