Istanbul Grand Airport

Istanbul Grand Airport (IGA) is the largest infrastructure project in the history of the Turkish Republic. IGA opened in 2018 after the completion of the first of four phases. The airport currently encompasses three runways with a total capacity of up to 90 million passengers. Once fully built out, IGA will have the ability to serve over 300 destinations and will create 225,000 direct and indirect jobs. By 2025, IGA’s annual passenger rate will be as high as 200 million. That’s nearly double the passenger count of the world’s current busiest airport (Atlanta International).

IGA wanted to take advantage of building a brand-new airport from the ground up and lay the foundation for a strong security infrastructure. The security team understood that in order to scale the business effectively and to provide smooth operations, IGA needed an automated and integrated security solution. Their requirements included in-depth visibility and automated remediation for all of IGA’s endpoints, and decreased, simplified workloads for the security administrators.

What started as a casual Sunday lunch with colleagues evolved into a potential opportunity for AMP CSE Senad Aruc. He learned from our Turkish partner, Destel A.S., that Istanbul was building a new airport and needed an endpoint security solution. Meeting with IGA’s head of security, Senad discovered that the IGA team didn’t understand the importance of endpoint detection and response (EDR). They had no plans at that time to deploy an EDR solution in the cybersecurity operations center (CSOC).

Senad began discussions with the IGA team and explained why the market is evolving toward EDR solutions. He convinced them to move forward with a Cisco AMP for Endpoints proof-of-value (PoV). AMP SE Director Doak Adams and the Turkish GSSO team assisted in demonstrating AMP for Endpoints’ retrospective security capability with the device and file trajectory feature. IGA was extremely impressed with those investigation tools. But the deal clincher was the AMP for Endpoints’ cloud-based management portal because it enables administrators to easily manage and provide real-time and automated responses.

Following the deployment of AMP for Endpoints, conversations with IGA continued. Our team highlighted the benefits of AMP’s integrated architecture. As a result, email security, web security, network security, and Threat Grid were added to the opportunity. AMP’s ability to see a threat once and block it everywhere in the IGA environment ultimately drove the growth of this endpoint opportunity to a full-blown security architecture deal.

IGA is Cisco’s first AMP deal in Turkey. Thanks to strong connections and relationships, we have since seen a domino effect. We have closed additional opportunities with multiple accounts, including Turkish Airlines, TGA, Eksim, and Ziraat SOC Consultancy, among others.