Telkomsel is the largest telecommunications provider in Indonesia and the sixth-largest in the world. In a country of 260 million people, Telkomsel has 168 million customers. It is not only large, but also an innovation leader. The company now provides content, transport and payment services to its mobile customers.
The business is built on consistency and reliability of service. With 184,000 base stations, it provides Indonesia’s widest network coverage – no mean feat in a country of 17,000 islands.
“Confidentiality, integrity and availability are our biggest challenges,” says Yohannes Glen Dwipajana, Vice President of ICT Security Management for Telkomsel. “We have 5,500 employees working around the country. We need to protect our business, our assets and customers’ data without compromising our SLAs.”
Telkomsel isn’t simply aiming for strong cybersecurity. It wants to use its influence to raise national confidence in the safety of online activity. If Telkomsel can develop strong cybersecurity, it may help other Indonesian businesses and consumers realize e-commerce can be done with minimal risk.
“As Indonesia’s flagship operator, we have a role in addressing cybersecurity,” says Dwipajana. “We want cybersecurity to be an enabler for our business and for Indonesians in general.”
Dwipajana saw an opportunity to review Telkomsel’s incumbent firewalls, recognizing it was time to move to next-generation firewalls.
“Palo Alto Networks provided a broad, reliable and easy-to-deploy offering,” he explains. “This last point was crucial. We handle a huge volume of transactions per second, and any migration would need to keep downtime to an absolute minimum.”
Migration With Minimal Downtime
The Palo Alto Networks Security Operating Platform deployment at Telkomsel comprises PA-5200 Series next-generation firewalls and Panorama™ network security management. Dwipajana says the decision to work with Palo Alto Networks was straightforward.
“We also had dedicated engineers both at the head office and regional data centers on 24/7 post-migration standby,” says Dwipajana. “We ended up with a huge number of security objects, network address translations and rules.”
Security Performance and Stability
Palo Alto Networks security technology enables Telkomsel to meet its regulatory requirements, such as ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation. The Palo Alto Networks platform is also scalable to accommodate Telkomsel’s rapid and dynamic growth. The company’s mobile streaming service, for instance, saw 3 million downloads and 500,000 concurrent users within two months of launch.
Dwipajana says the Palo Alto Networks Threat Prevention subscription is already proving its worth. He also cites the impact of Panorama: “It’s simplified our firewall management, with the entire audit log in one place. We have fewer issues, and any issues we do have are now solved in minutes. Being able to see the status of every firewall is really saving us time.”