Deploying Smart Out-of-Band at banking branches

The Challenge

Türkiye Finans, a Turkish Banking group, serves over 1 million international customers and has more than 250 branches. The bank has an ongoing process to improve the detection and resolution of its IT systems. Using this proactive approach, it identified a need to create an Out-of-Band (OOB) management network utilizing PSTN within its dispersed branch sites.

The solution had to meet several criteria:

• Ensure secure communications with strong data encryption
• Provision, maintain and repair systems with built-in Out-of-Band access and control
• Serve both data center and branch sites with a scalable product offering
• Provide competitive pricing versus performance aspect with non-restrictive upgrade policy

The Opengear Solution

Wanting to specifically work with a proven technology supplier, Türkiye Finans chose Opengear. The bank chose an array of remote site products, which have been rolled out to 145 sites, to enable secure remote monitoring, access, and control of its distributed install.

The bank has since installed these products at branches in throughout the country. Erdal Ek, Senior Network Specialist, confirms that the Out-of-Band solution has given network admins ease to upload managed infrastructure configuration and operating system images from the device’s internal flash drive for remote bare metal provisioning of critical systems. Also, it has improved the IT department’s ability to manage and configure remote devices during installation or if a challenge arises.

Working with an Opengear partner, CTS Bilisim, the bank has upgraded each branch and integrated a secure serial console server and PSTN dial-in gateway with stateful firewall,  at each location to ensure the security compliance necessary for financial transactions.

For its high-density data center environments, the bank has specified the Infrastructure Manager.

Türkiye Finans’ need has been fulfilled and now:

• Has simplified remote management including backup and restore of managed infrastructure configuration
• Allows for off-site configuration of network infrastructure during remote installs and upgrades
• Reduces the in break-fix time with a wide range of infrastructure issues including total failure of WAN connectivity.

“Opengear saves us time and allows us to quickly understand and resolve a wide range of problems and ultimately increase customer satisfaction.”
– Erdal Ek, Senior Network Specialist, Türkiye Finans