CISCO SOLUTION FOR ONE OF THE BIGGEST EGYPTIAN OIL & GAS COMPANIES
Country
Damietta, Egypt
Sector
Oil & Gas
# of Employees
500+
Vendor
Cisco
Technology
Data Center
Summary:
A critical-infrastructure oil and gas operator faced growing cyber risk to the data center systems behind its plant, engineering, and commercial workflows, while a widening base of remote engineers, vendors, and staff needed secure access from outside the facility.
Working with GTS, the operator deployed a next-generation firewall as its data center security backbone and a dedicated remote-access VPN gateway. The result is a defense-in-depth architecture delivering full visibility and threat control at the data center edge, strong IT/OT segmentation, and encrypted, policy-controlled remote access.
Customer Challenges
Limited threat visibility:
Legacy perimeter controls lacked visibility into applications, users, and encrypted threats.
Compliance:
As critical infrastructure, the operator required auditable controls aligned to industry standards.
Secure access:
Engineers, contractors, and vendors needed secure access without exposing the facility to unmanaged connections.
Efficiency:
Security teams needed centralized policy and logging instead of box-by-box administration.
GTS Core Solution
Next-Generation Firewall — Data Center Protection
- NGFWs deployed [in HA pairs] at the edge and between internal zones, inspecting north-south and east-west traffic.
- Next-generation IPS with continuously updated threat intelligence against energy-sector exploits and malware.
- Application control and URL filtering to enforce least-privilege access between user, server, and OT-adjacent zones.
- Centralized policy, event, and health management from a single console.
Remote-Access VPN
- VPN gateways [in active/standby HA] terminating encrypted client sessions for staff, engineers, and approved third parties.
- Strong authentication via [AD / RADIUS / MFA], allowing only verified users and compliant devices.
- Granular group policies mapping each user community to only the resources it needs, with full session logging.
Results and & Business Outcomes
- Full real-time visibility into applications, users, and intrusion events from a single console.
- Reduced attack surface — segmentation contains lateral movement and shields OT-adjacent systems.
- Secure, productive remote work for users connecting from anywhere.
- Faster response — inline IPS blocking and consolidated logs cut investigation time by [XX%].
- Compliance readiness through auditable, centrally managed policies.
- [99%] less time spent on firewall administration via centralized management.
