Türkiye's AI-powered networking product showcased at Mobile World Congress in Spain

By Goksel Yildirim

BARCELONA (AA) - Türkiye's national network solutions will be enhanced by a new product developed by Turkish engineers that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to make wide area network infrastructures more secure and cost-effective.​​​​​​​

Ulak Communications, a Türkiye-based communications firm, recently developed and showcased national tech solutions at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2024 in Barcelona, Spain.

Ulak created "uMAYA SD-WAN," Türkiye’s first and only AI-powered national network solution designed with a software-defined approach to make wide area network infrastructures easily manageable.

The project is an innovative solution that has a direct impact on the end user through functions such as centralized management, network abstraction, and increased cyber security.

“uMAYA SD-WAN” has been offered to many institutions and organizations as a solution since its first commercial sale in 2019.

Ali Akcay, Ulak Communications' systems engineering manager, told Anadolu that the company will have the opportunity to introduce its product to a large number of Turkish and foreign customers at the MWC.

Akcay emphasized that the “uMAYA SD-WAN” offers a management system and a cybersecurity solution for use in wide area network infrastructures. With this product, institutions can ensure secure and uninterrupted communication with cloud services, he added.

He said the product has been in use in several areas in Türkiye and abroad for five years now.

The company has been watching what their global competitors have developed and showcasing at the MWC, he said, adding: "At this point, we can see that our product is close to those made by global competitors and even provides technically more advantageous features at certain points.

“Especially this year, we saw that artificial intelligence and cloud-based solutions are very prominent at the event. We have been trying to develop and popularize these technologies with our products for a long time, and our efforts in this field are steps taken at the right time and aimed at the right target.”

The goal is to create a world-class technology product in the country, and Ulak Communication wants the product to be able to provide much higher-level features in cybersecurity and network management, as well as to compete with global competitors in different classifications, Akcay said.

He underlined the difficulty of developing a product of this caliber, saying one of the most important motivators for the company is for Turkish institutions to use the product.

- AI to detect behavior eliminates security risks

Akcay said cybersecurity is becoming increasingly complex as new cybersecurity threats, attack methods, and vulnerabilities emerge daily, all of which must be addressed quickly.

He said, “Behavior-based detection, which detects whether an attack is launched or there is a normal reaction from the user behavior in incoming traffic, is a subject that is focused on a lot. We aim to use artificial intelligence intensively in our SD-WAN product, especially in the cybersecurity layer.”

“The aim here is to eliminate security risks, human error, configuration, and monitoring-related errors by providing an autonomous cybersecurity layer that is not dependent on external sources," he added.

- End-to-end encrypted communication

According to Akcay, the SD-WAN is used to manage traffic between users, systems, and data centers, securing all traffic from endpoints and providing secure access over the wide area network.

He pointed out that the product provides end-to-end cybersecurity through encryption, traffic monitoring, and other features, as well as uninterrupted service by connecting to multiple networks simultaneously.

“We use multiple carrier networks simultaneously. This product enables radio networks, fiber infrastructures, and broadband internet infrastructures to be used securely as access infrastructure," he stated.

He said, “All management here is carried out by a central control layer. The traffic management and cyber security policies you implement can be easily managed from a single point through this layer.

"A central control layer handles all management in this system. This layer allows you to easily manage the traffic management and cybersecurity policies you implement from a single point."

*Writing by Emir Yildirim in Istanbul