Turkish Aerospace Industries deploys UserLock to manage user access across its vast and complex network

Turkish Aerospace Industries, Inc. (TAI) is Turkey’s center of technology in design, development, modernization, manufacturing, integration and life cycle support of integrated aerospace systems, from fixed and rotary wing air platforms to unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) systems and space systems.

Located in Ankara, Turkey, on a 5 million square meter area ,a state-of-the-art industrial facility is furnished with high technology machinery and equipment that enables design, development, modernization and system integration with extensive manufacturing capabilities ranging from parts manufacturing to aircraft assembly, flight tests and delivery. It is a reliable solution provider to both military and commercial customers.

Managed centrally, the TAI IT infrastructure includes many clients, users, servers, terabytes of data, several external devices, and applications. As with other aerospace organisations, TAI has many legal, regulatory and compliance requirements including NATO Security Directives, security regulations required by contract, international standards and internal security directives.

IT security is of paramount importance and TAI has maintained the ISO/IEC 27001:2013 IT Security Management certification for all business processes for 10 years. In addition, the IT department has also been accredited with ISO/IEC 2000-1:2011 IT Service Management certification.

The Challenge Restrict authorized users to one concurrent session

TAI’s information security policy is to provide access to authorized employees and systems which will protect the network and its information from possible threats. Security consciousness is also key as it is important for all employees to understand potential threats to the network.

There are several users who require different levels of security to logon to the network and the IT team needed a solution that will help them manage all network access. Previously, the IT team used CConnect but it was inadequate in meeting the necessary security protocols.

The Solution Enforce user session restrictions

In 2005, the IT team researched the market to find a solution that would meet all its security requirements and discovered UserLock by IS Decisions through a Google search. The IT manager shared that UserLock stood out amongst the other solutions available as it was easy to use and had much better features compared to the software the team had been using. The IT manager made the decision to purchase UserLock from SoftwareShelf and has renewed its licence ever since to the point where it currently owns 13,000 licences having added a further 1000 this year.

The setting up was simple. Once the server was set up, it was configured to meet the department’s security needs. The main setup took only a couple of hours but the “agent distribution” took a few days. The UserLock desktop agent allows the team to define and enforce user sessions policies and this agent can be deployed to every user.

The Benefits Compliance with legal regulations and international security standards

The overall objective was to improve the effectiveness and performance of the IT security service to the organisation. It was important for the IT team to be able to manage user sessions in the network and UserLock helps ensure that users have the right access to the network and restricts logons accordingly.

The implementation of UserLock ensures that TAI meets compliance with Turkish law, regulations and international security standards.

Turkish Aerospace Industries, Inc. initially deployed UserLock in 2005 and they have renewed every year for 11 years. It currently owns 13,000 licences having added a further 1000 this year.