SOCAR Türkiye strengthens security with Microsoft Intune and Microsoft 365 E5

SOCAR Türkiye is the Turkish subsidiary of SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state oil company, and operates as a key player in Türkiye’s refining and petrochemical sector. Unlike SOCAR’s upstream operations in Azerbaijan, which focus on extracting crude oil and natural gas, SOCAR Türkiye specializes in downstream operations, focusing on refining, petrochemicals, and natural gas. As Türkiye’s largest integrated industrial group, the company operates across the entire energy value chain—from processing raw materials to delivering high-value products to end users. With ongoing investments in production capacity and infrastructure, SOCAR Türkiye plays a key role in the region’s energy and industrial landscape. 

Unifying device management 

Operating in the highly regulated refinery and petrochemical industry, SOCAR Türkiye requires top-tier data security to protect its sensitive operations, which span multiple sites and thousands of devices. The company previously relied on two on-premises mobile device management (MDM) solutions, which offered limited capabilities and required significant operational investment. “We were using 15 servers, faced exorbitant costs, and had to invest significant effort into operations, updates, and hardware maintenance,” shares Fırat Bilmiş, IT System Services Supervisor at SOCAR Türkiye. Beyond cost and efficiency concerns, business continuity was difficult, requiring separate disaster recovery infrastructure across multiple locations. Security was another major challenge, with limited visibility and fragmented endpoint protection.

After SOCAR Türkiye moved to Microsoft 365 E5, it saw an opportunity to modernize its MDM system by migrating it to the cloud. Cost savings were a major driver behind this decision. “From the beginning, our vision was to consolidate everything into a single security and management platform,” explains Bilmiş. “This would not only lower our costs but also strengthen security and make it easier to manage IT.” 

SOCAR Türkiye’s migration involved nearly 5,000 devices, including iOS, macOS, Android, and Windows. “Typically, managing different operating systems would require multiple management solutions. However, we were able to onboard all devices into Microsoft Intune seamlessly,” explains Bilmiş.

SOCAR follows the cutting-edge features in managing their computing platforms regardless of the vendor by using Microsoft Intune. The company was able to apply single sign-on (SSO) and cloud public key infrastructure (PKI) features across all the devices, ensuring a unified security and management approach across all endpoints. “This was a very important feature because the devices may be used by executives who have access to highly confidential information. We wanted to ensure that they have streamlined access to do what they need to do while also ensuring security,” Bilmiş highlights. 

Strengthening security with centralization

As part of its effort to centralize security operations, SOCAR Türkiye merged its system center configuration manager (SCCM) with Microsoft Intune, allowing IT to manage both cloud and on-prem devices through a unified system. It also adopted Microsoft Purview for data classification. “Another key factor for choosing Microsoft 365 E5 was the extended detection and response (XDR). We have been able to replace our previous solutions with Microsoft Defender for Identity, for Endpoint, and for Office,” Bilmiş adds.

Previously, SOCAR Türkiye’s employees were using various email applications, whereas now, they are using Microsoft 365 E5 products, including Edge, Outlook, and Microsoft Teams. SOCAR Türkiye applied additional security controls to prevent unauthorized data sharing. “For instance, users cannot take screenshots, or share critical data via third-party applications,” Bilmiş shares. 

SOCAR Türkiye also improved its ability to detect and respond to threats in real time. “Based on our conditional access rules, if an incident occurs, Microsoft Defender immediately blocks the user’s access and notifies us of the incident,” Bilmiş explains. The system enables security teams to investigate the incident while any data in question is secured automatically. “From an operational standpoint, our team can now access a single security portal with customized authorization levels. This allows them to focus on specific tasks, such as investigating and managing security incidents, without unnecessary access to other areas,” Bilmiş adds. “This level of unified control enables us to effectively monitor, recover, and protect our company data across any device.”

Shifting security management to the cloud automated and streamlined SOCAR Türkiye’s disaster recovery efforts. “Business continuity has been the most important benefit of Microsoft Intune. Previously, we had to manage several on-premises disaster recovery sites, ensuring backup systems were always ready. With Microsoft 365 E5 and Intune, this process is now automated and seamless, as everything is cloud-based,” Bilmiş says.

Enhanced security with less effort

Throughout the entire transition, SOCAR Türkiye worked closely with Microsoft. “Working with the Microsoft FastTrack team for the first time was an absolute delight. It felt like collaborating with dependable friends,” Bilmiş remarks. “Microsoft’s team has been incredibly responsive, reliable, and hands-on throughout the process, ensuring we had the guidance and expertise needed for a smooth transition and resolving any issues instantly. This level of support has been crucial in ensuring a smooth transition and reinforcing trust in our decision.” 

“Now that everything is consolidated into Microsoft’s ecosystem, security and performance are fully managed, and I can sleep peacefully at night knowing that the system is stable. I no longer have to check if the server is up or down or if our data center is healthy every few minutes,” Bilmiş highlights. 

Administration is simpler across the board. “Managing everything on the same dashboard, with the same menu structure is great. Operators no longer need additional training and skills to manage the multitude of different systems and identify a threat amongst them,” IT System Services Group Manager Kenan Demirtaş remarks. “With Microsoft security, we’ve eliminated multiple standalone solutions in favor of a single, integrated system. At the end of five years, we’re expecting to save 3 million USD.”

Additionally, by migrating to Microsoft Cloud and eliminating 15–20 on-premises servers, SOCAR Türkiye has lowered its carbon footprint, viewing the reduction in CO2 emissions as a significant success in its sustainability efforts. Demirtaş states: “By disabling the servers for on-premise Exchange, MDM, and disaster recovery solutions, we are expecting to save an additional 567.65 kg of CO2 equivalent per year, based on power consumption, time, and carbon produced by the local power grid.”

Enhancing mobile workforce security

“In our company, we have a mix of people working from home, working from our various sites, or travelling. People use mobile devices and applications extensively, so we have a big portion of our workforce that encounter these security features daily,” shares Demirtaş. The move ensures smoother experience for all these employees who regularly rely on mobile applications and remote access.

While the migration itself caused no disruptions in employees’ day-to-day work, the improvements were noticeable. “Users no longer experience battery drain or system slowdowns, like they did before with the many security solutions running on mobile devices. Microsoft security solutions are significantly faster—whether for MFA with Entra ID P2 or threat detection. Users have praised the improvement,” Demirtaş highlights.

SOCAR Türkiye’s transition to Microsoft tools also simplified daily workflows. “Users are extremely happy that we switched to Outlook, which is far better for email management compared to previous email solutions: it’s more advanced and more manageable,” Demirtaş says. Reliability was another key factor in employee satisfaction. “From the end-user perspective, Microsoft single-sign-on (SSO) is faster and more reliable,” Bilmiş says. “Ultimately, an end-user who doesn’t have technical knowledge doesn't really care how it works—they just care that it works seamlessly. That is exactly what Microsoft security solutions achieve for us.”

Scaling a security blueprint globally

The company plans to build on its security foundation by adding more features as Microsoft releases them and integrating AI into its operations.

SOCAR Türkiye’s success has also set a precedent for SOCAR’s global operations. “The dedication of Chief Digital Transformation & Information Technologies Officer Akın Börekçi and IT Infrastructure & Operations Group Director Cengiz Şeker have been instrumental in enhancing our IT infrastructure and ensuring the security of our operations. Now, we have a blueprint to apply advanced security features, globally in SOCAR group companies. Many of them already asked us to share our experience and expertise gained through this implementation,” concludes Bilmiş. 

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