Opinnate Success Story – PayTR

Yunus Durmaz, Director of Information Security at PayTR, spoke about the Opinnate success story. Durmaz said:

We have made it possible to reduce our processes—which used to take days or weeks—to a matter of hours, or even just 1–2 hours.

Yunus Durmaz:
PayTR It is a fintech company that provides electronic payment services. The Frader software, which offers a variety of payment solutions—ranging from virtual POS to physical POS, from link-based payments to Neopos—to more than 200,000 businesses, serves as a secure solution partner with its PCI DSS-compliant infrastructure, 3D Secure service, and teams providing 24/7 support.

Host:
What kinds of challenges were you facing before you started using Opinnate?

Yunus Durmaz:
Before using Opinnate, the processes involved in conducting “firewall” analyses were quite time-consuming. We generally carried these out using manual processes. Whether using Excel or our own software, our teams were expending a great deal of effort to complete these tasks. Our teams, who were continuing with these manual processes, were wasting a great deal of effort and time. Along with this effort, the human error factor also became quite significant. To reduce these issues, we developed our own custom solutions. We applied different methods in Excel. We used the consoles of the relevant products. From there, we implemented robust reporting and alert systems. However, this still did not provide us with a fully integrated structure. With Opinnate, we were able to better manage this structure. In fact, I would say we automated it.

Host:
What factors led you to choose Opinnate?

Yunus Durmaz:
Before choosing Opinnate, we actually clarified exactly what our needs were. Afterward, key factors for us included a solution-oriented approach aligned with our needs, automation, and support services. Even during Opinnate’s initial demo phase, we had the opportunity to directly experience some of its features. We saw that it grouped “firewall” analysis results, identified risks, and presented them to us in a standards-compliant format—all without us having to provide any information. This was a significant advantage for us. Another key aspect for us was the reporting feature. This is because, due to legal and regulatory requirements, we have regular processes in place across many areas. Since we have processes such as “firewall” rule analysis and the reporting of these results, Opinnate has saved us a lot of time here. It allowed us to eliminate those manual processes and then automate them, reducing processes that used to take days or even weeks to just a few hours—or even as little as one or two hours.

Host:
How did your setup, implementation, and integration processes go?

Yunus Durmaz:;
The setup process actually went faster than we expected. Also, in setup and integration processes like this, the integration parts in particular can be a bit challenging, but thanks to Opinnate and its technical team, I can say that the process went very smoothly and with great support.

Host:
Which features of Opinnate helped increase your productivity?

Yunus Durmaz:
The first value Opinnate provided us right from the start was its “firewall” rule analysis processes. It not only grouped the risks but also presented us with a clear visual overview of who had greater permissions. In the manual processes we used to follow, we had to go through each rule individually—hundreds of them—to identify issues such as which ones had high privileges, which granted greater access, and what the risk level was. With Open Nate, we were able to reduce this to about an hour by running a single “job.” Initially, these processes took months. We later reduced that to weeks, but couldn’t get it any shorter. Opinnate enabled us to accomplish this in a very short time. As a result, our teams were able to step away from these routine processes and focus their efforts on other projects. At the same time, while conducting our risk analyses, Opinnate’s powerful passive monitoring feature provided significant value in many areas. In particular, during audit processes, when an immediate analysis was needed, we were able to extract meaningful insights from the data collected over the past 30 days. Using these analyses as a basis to make more value-added optimizations was highly beneficial for us. We could say that before Opinnate, we were operating somewhat reactively. The existence of those manual processes, the high effort required, and the risk of human error pushed us toward a reactive approach. In other words, we were the ones intervening after an incident had already occurred. However, one of our strategic goals has always been to operate proactively. Opinnate has enabled us to shift toward a more proactive structure by allowing us to conduct risk analyses and validations—whether before or after a rule is written. At the same time, it saved us approximately 60% of the time we previously spent reviewing “firewall” requests, providing additional benefits to the relevant business units and internal operations teams. Furthermore, the greatest benefit Opinnate has provided us is that it has improved the quality of communication between the security team and the “network” team. This is because the shared platform has enabled us to speak a common language. While evaluating Opinnate, we actually had discussions with other players in the industry. At that point, one of the features that set Opinnate apart from the others was that its products required a bit of “feeding”—it took some extra effort. The more you fed it, the more valuable data you could extract. But I can say that we started reaping the benefits of Opinnate right from the very beginning. This is because, along with the ready-made packages it provided us, it allowed us to view our entire picture—including our risk levels—all on a single “dashboard.” Of course, when we encountered issues along the way, the fact that Opinnate is a local solution—allowing us to reach out directly to the relevant technical team—was a major advantage. And since we saw that they were committed to adding even more value to the product based on our feedback, working with them was a pleasure for us.