Case Study: Austrian Airlines achieves first-class network security, 25% less admin effort and 40% fewer infections with Palo Alto Networks

Austrian Airlines’ Security and Efficiencies Take Off with Palo Alto Networks® Enterprise Security Platform

Austrian Airlines, Austria’s largest carrier with a global network serving about 130 destinations and roughly 9,500 users across 80 offices, needed to modernize an aging security infrastructure to improve application visibility and control, streamline IT management, support virtualization and PCI compliance, and meet growing demands for faster passenger check-ins. Legacy firewalls were slow and cumbersome—updates could take an entire night—and the airline sought a more efficient, application-aware approach to protect sensitive systems used for flight operations, maintenance and customer services.

The airline deployed Palo Alto Networks’ enterprise security platform, installing two PA-5020 next‑generation firewalls as its Internet gateway and enabling Threat Prevention, URL Filtering and site-to-site VPNs. The new solution consolidated management, cut IT administration time by 25%, reduced cluster update time from a night to 10 minutes, lowered infection rates by 40%, halved the number of firewalls on the network (saving costs), and delivered greater application and threat visibility and much faster policy deployment.

Austrian Airlines

Thomas Kaiblinger

Head of Network and Communications Infrastructure