Thought leadership piece from Moiz Baig, Head of Cybersecurity Solutions at Nokia MEA
As organisations embark on their Digital Transformation journey with an ambition to improve their internal processes as well as to be able to serve their customers in the digital age, an often-overlooked aspect is security. With telcos holding vast amounts of Personal Identifiable Information (PII) and as the telco networks are the spine of national communications, they are an increasingly attractive target for cybercriminals. Nokia offers them a range of solutions to ensure their security.
The challenging nature of 5G networks to support unique and diverse business requirements of vertical sectors have rendered current network security rendered less than adequate. For example, multi-tenancy in 5G networks, i.e. infrastructure sharing by multiple virtual network operators also known as Network Slicing will require strict isolation at multiple levels to ensure absolute security.
In 5G networks, reliability does not only refer to of the network infrastructure but also to ensuring high connectivity, infinite capacity and coverage (and other promised 5G features) anytime and anywhere. This implies a security makeover of how confidentiality, integrity and availability will be maintained and managed in 5G networks. Furthermore, the already high complexity of securing a network and its services has scaled up another notch with the introduction of SDN and NFV in 5G networks.
These are just a few examples of security challenges out of the many that are anticipated in 5G networks. In addition, service-specific security requirements must also be considered as the 5G ecosystem is anticipated to be service-oriented. For example, remote healthcare requires resilient and robust security while IoT demands relatively less stringent security. Security requirements can therefore vary substantially.
Nokia’s end-to-end security solutions help mitigate these security risks in a three-step process. We collaborate with 3GPP and other specification bodies to influence the security requirements, which are then implemented into all our products by our DFSEC (Design for Security Process).
Lastly, we have a wide range of network security solutions and services that help operators to automate and orchestrate the security requirements by consolidating network security requirements into a single operations view via our SOAR approach. It leverages our best-in-class Global Threat Intelligence repository and automated workflow management to help CISOs & CIOs develop an end-to-end visibility and control on their security operations which will become far more critical as the adoption of 5G accelerates.
Nokia is pleased to once again be recognised by Ethisphere as one of the 2019 World’s Most Ethical Companies in the Telecommunications category. It has long been part of the Nokia way to treat every business relationship according to the highest ethical standards. The complexity of the 5G network environment also brings new and sizable security risks relative to what we have known just in recent times. In this context, a secure network is critical for operators.
Security is in Nokia’s DNA and the company painstakingly maintains high ethical standards in conducting its business with customers.
