BBVA

Overview

BBVA is a customer-centric, global financial services group founded in 1857. It has a strong
leadership position in the Spanish market, is the largest financial institution in Mexico, and has leading franchises in South America and the Sunbelt region of the United States. It is also the leading shareholder in Garanti, Turkey’s biggest bank by market capitalization.

BBVA leads the way in worldwide digital banking. Its mobile app has been repeatedly ranked by Forrester Research as the number one global mobile banking app, and over half of the company’s worldwide sales and customer interactions are currently made through digital channels.

Challenge

Continuously looking to enhance the operational excellence of its teams and drive its sustainable competitive advantage, BBVA wanted to make the transition from wired to wireless connectivity across their corporate locations in Madrid, including its corporate headquarters. With its buildings designed to cater to wireless connection models that minimize the need for physical cables, this investment represents a sure bet for the company. Wi-Fi 6—the sixth generation of Wi-Fi technology—was BBVA’s choice for its new wireless network due to fast connection speeds, superior coverage, and support for high-density wireless environments.

Solution

To make this important transition, BBVA sought a proven, next-generation wireless solution that would not only offer the many benefits of Wi-Fi 6, but would also be highly scalable and provide the highest level of security available to protect its network from unauthorized access by malicious actors. To meet these requirements, BBVA selected the Cisco Meraki wireless solution, including MR access points.

A key advantage of the Meraki MRs is that each is equipped with built-in wireless intrusion
protection and intrusion detection systems (WIPS and WIDS). These systems continuously scan their environment in real time and take preemptive action against various threats based on intuitive user-defined preferences. The solution’s combination of cloud-based management and flexible remediation policies makes it particularly beneficial for distributed, security-conscious networks like BBVA’s.

In addition to these security capabilities, the Meraki solution provides BBVA’s IT teams with real-time visibility into employees using the network, their devices, and their applications. Rich analytics capabilities enable BBVA’s administrators to quickly create access control and application usage policies, optimizing both the end-user experience and network security. BBVA also benefits from powerful and intuitive management of all its sites via the cloud, which eliminates the cost and complexity of traditional onsite wireless controllers.

Enrique Blázquez

BEX Networking Infrastructure
Responsible at I&O Area – BBVA Spain

Result

With the deployment of the Cisco Meraki wireless solution across all 56 of its corporate
properties in Spain, BBVA becomes the first in the Spanish banking industry to deploy Wi-Fi 6
technology. BBVA’s employees are the primary beneficiaries of the new solution as they are
now able to experience faster browsing speeds and better Wi-Fi coverage at the office. Latency is significantly reduced, meaning better response times from network-connected services. BBVA’s employees will also enjoy a marked improvement in the delivery of high-quality video conferencing and the use of cloud-based applications while receiving remote training.

BBVA’s IT teams will also realize important efficiencies from the wireless deployment,
minimizing the time to resolve potential incidents, and with Wi-Fi 6 reducing the energy
consumed by connected devices, the solution will help the company meet its sustainability targets.

BBVA has realized significant cost savings with the deployment of the Meraki wireless solution due to the tightly integrated advanced security detection and prevention in each Meraki access point. These security capabilities have eliminated the need for additional equipment, which would have resulted in significantly higher upfront costs for BBVA.

The addition of Wi-Fi 6 will complement the 5G network that BBVA began to deploy in 2019
across its corporate offices in Madrid for the bank’s exclusive use. With Wi-Fi 6 connectivity,
BBVA employees will be able to enjoy the benefits of 5G in the bank’s interior spaces, meeting rooms, and offices. The company anticipates that the combination of the two technologies will feed the creation of new services and digital experiences.

In addition, after deploying the Meraki Wi-Fi 6 solutions, BBVA has the foundation in place to
seamlessly deploy IoT solutions based on sensors to better understand trends about their physical environment and improve safety, security, and operational decision making through a data-driven approach.