Forcepoint Helps Pegasus Airlines Move to the Cloud as Safely as It Flies in the Clouds

The most digital airline in Turkey is able to meet its country’s stringent data protection laws by partnering with Forcepoint to protect users and data, wherever they are.

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The largest private airline in Turkey, Pegasus Airlines is using leading-edge technology to bring low-cost flight to everyone in its home country. But its increased reliance on wireless and cloud also meant increased vulnerability to malicious plug-ins and breaches of sensitive company and customer data—a situation that would put the airline in violation of strict European Union and Turkish data protection laws. To remedy the situation, it turned to Forcepoint for enterprise-class, strategic security across the span of the business.

Challenges

  • Airline employees routinely use company laptops to work remotely, on unsecured network from restaurants, hotels, and the various airports the airline serves.
  • European GDPR regulations and the Turkish Personal Data Protection Authority required strong security for personal customer information.

Approach

  • Migrate the existing on-premises Forcepoint Web Security to Forcepoint Web Security Cloud.

Results

  • Transition to cloud-based security allowed the airline to eliminate hardware costs, reduce maintenance effort, and automatically deliver high availability, while protecting users wherever they work.
  • Addition of Forcepoint DLP allowed company to document more than  400 terabytes of data throughout  data center systems, databases,  and cloud-based systems in just  three months.
  • Forcepoint solutions are now considered strategic for the entire business.

Founded in 1999, Pegasus Airlines has grown to be the largest private airline in Turkey and the second largest overall, shuttling more than 30 million customers over that time. With a goal of delivering low-cost airline services to everyone in Turkey, the company invested a groundbreaking $22 million in innovative technologies during 2011. In 2012, it made Turkish civil aviation history with a $12 billion order of 100 new Airbus aircraft, the largest ever at the time. And in 2018, the company partnered with Immfly to deliver onboard digital services to its customers. 

Pegasus employees routinely use company laptops to work remotely, from restaurants, hotels, and the various airports 
the airline serves. It became a struggle to protect them from malicious plug-ins directly downloaded from the internet and introduced to the office and the network environments. Private and valuable customer data was also at risk without a solution that could shield personnel wherever they worked. Plus, European GDPR regulations require tight data security, and the Turkish Personal Data Protection Authority has added its own additional requirements, fining non-compliant companies up to one million Turkish Liras.

Pegasus leadership wanted a security partner with a roadmap that could not only protect its users and data but, one day, help the company integrate other solutions that could even further improve the level of protection. Luckily, the airline already had such a partner in place: Forcepoint. The Forcepoint Web Security solution was already on-premises, so all the company had to do was expand the partnership to take security to the cloud. 

“Instead of spending our time finding unwanted software, our team is able to focus on more critical issues.”

Murat Zarali
,
Information Security Manager, Pegasus

Proof of concept in only two days; reduced costs and more flexible security moving forward

To reach its goals, the airline would have to migrate from the  on-premises Web Security solution to Forcepoint Web Security Cloud. Within two days, the Proof of Concept had demonstrated how easy the solution was to operate, manage, and control. Rollout was smooth and the company’s leadership was surprised to see almost instant results after the implementation. The evolved solution expands the same powerful security of the Forcepoint Web Security on-premises solution to remote and roaming users—both on and off the corporate network. This ensures that employees taking their laptops on the road to unsecured locations will not unintentionally introduce malicious software to the company network.   

This protection also helped the company realize a significant increase in productivity. Because they’re protected everywhere, employees could no longer accidentally download malware that had to be reported by the employee and removed by IT. The security teams can focus their attention on increasing the airline’s IT edge. “Instead of spending our time finding unwanted software, our team is able to focus on more critical issues,” explained Murat Zarali, Information Security Manager, Pegasus.

Moving the company’s web security to the cloud also helps simplify management and reduce costs. It enables the company to eliminate the web security appliance footprint and maintenance of those appliances. The benefits include replacing the cumbersome process of version upgrades with automatic software upgrades that happen without requiring oversight or activity by the IT team.

And finally, moving to a completely cloud-based web solution delivers security that can easily scale with the needs of the company. The automatic load balancing doesn’t require capacity planning and makes failover planning simpler. It also allows the  IT team to deliver automatically high availability without  additional configurations. 

Overall, moving to Forcepoint’s cloud-based Web Security allows the airline to eliminate hardware costs, reduce maintenance effort, and automatically deliver high availability to scale with usage, all while protecting users wherever they need to work. 

400 Terabytes of Data secured in 90 Days

Terabytes of data documented and secured in 90 days

While migrating its web security to the cloud, the airline also added Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention (DLP) to safeguard all of its data, wherever it resides. In just three months, Forcepoint DLP documented more than 400 terabytes of data throughout the airline’s data center systems, databases, and cloud-based systems. With its endpoint, network, and discovery capabilities, this included unstructured data found in email messages, documents, and other types of files. The DLP collaboration is ongoing, with a Forcepoint on-site visit every two weeks to fine-tune the loss prevention and discovery policies and further improve detection and categorization.

“Forcepoint solutions are now considered strategic for the entire business.”

Kemal Artikarslan
,
Senior Sales Engineer, Forcepoint

Flying safely into the cloud

Taking advantage of Forcepoint’s far-reaching, global cloud infrastructure, Pegasus has gained enterprise-grade protection for mobile employees. The solutions have been so successful, company leadership is currently investigating the addition of other Forcepoint technologies to protect them as they continue their transition into the cloud. These include Behavioral Analytics to provide deep insight into high-risk user activities, and Forcepoint’s cloud access security broker (CASB), which provides visibility and control over cloud use within the enterprise. 

“We are very pleased with Forcepoint Web Security Cloud and the Forcepoint team, who are helping us realize the capabilities of their entire portfolio of integrated solutions,” said Zarali.

“Forcepoint solutions are now considered strategic for the entire business,” said Forcepoint Senior Sales Engineer, Kemal Artikarslan. Added Zarali, “Forcepoint has provided a great security foundation for us.”

Customer Profile

Technologically leading airline focused on bringing low-cost flight to everyone in Turkey.