Mesh WiFi specialist Plume has made another move to boost its security credentials in the home, this week announcing a deal with Akamai to provide a joint offering to operators looking to launch smart home and smart business services – sharing customers and both sales and marketing teams.
The main thrust of the partnership is on the software and services side. Akamai’s attack mitigation services, which prevent websites being taken offline by immense distributed denial of service (DDoS) and traffic routing abuses, have a stellar reputation, but they are mainly known in the firm’s content delivery network (CDN) core market, not in the more conventional cybersecurity realm.
By this, we mean the sorts of security services offered to small and medium businesses (SMBs), to monitor network traffic, scan for installed malware, issue security updates and patches, and generally act as an overseer for your business software environment. To many SMBs, ‘security’ means more physical security, such as cameras and alarm systems, but as more of their business operations are moved wholly online, their risk footprint increases dramatically. This, then, is a growing market, and Akamai and Plume are hoping that their combined capabilities prove alluring.
The dynamic for the smart home is rather different, however. The operators targeted by this partnership are looking to provide value-add services to existing customers, rather than use security as a way to generate new leads.
There are parallels to be made between the SMB sector’s growing connectivity footprint and the home. As more connected devices are brought into the home, the risk that a rogue actor can manipulate sub-par security standards to gain a foothold in the home increases. For both consumers and businesses, network outages are painful, but while a business might have processes or insurance, if a consumer’s data is stolen, or their smart home devices taken for a ride, that’s a very personally damaging matter.
Currently, the consumer anger is going to be directed at the device maker, but the operators have a significant risk exposure here, the minute they start pitching security as a unique selling point.
Worryingly, the operators are essentially the lowest common denominator here. They, after all, are providing the equipment that connects devices such as home cameras and Ring gadgets to the Internet. There have been murmurs about creating laws to hold both device makers and ISPs accountable, especially in Europe, but fortunately for the operators, there has been little movement – though they should bear the risk in mind. Being pre-emptive would be beneficial, as we have already seen examples of operator CPE being targeted by cybercriminals – Deutsche Telekom was a notable early victim of the Mirai attack, for instance.
The scale of that attack – some 900,000 routers according to Germany’s BSI – should worry every operator that has ever placed a connected device inside a consumer home. Lawsuits are almost certainly going to begin cropping up if businesses think they can prove damages caused by insecure field equipment, but a more pressing concern might be that of tarnished reputation.
But of course, this is an opportunity for Plume and Akamai. They can point to examples like this and position themselves as the ideal solution to that looming problem – nipping things in the bud, before they flare up. Akamai’s State of the Internet series of reports is excellent fodder for such marketing initiatives.
Akamai already provides Vodafone and Telstra with its Security and Personalization Services (SPS) offering, which these operators then resell to their own customers. Given Plume’s position with Comcast’s CPE, and Comcast Business already using those Akamai SPS services, we would be very surprised if Comcast’s residential division doesn’t adopt the new joint offering.
Parental controls are another element at play, which promise to allow parents to choose what content should be filtered at the router level. In theory, this should ensure that kids are not exposed to things their parents want kept from them, but sufficiently motivated teenagers are rather adept at bypassing such filters.
Integrating Plume’s Consumer Experience Management (CEM) platform with Akamai’s SPS portfolio should “offer a unified subscriber experience for digital services management for home and business. The combined global reach of the sales teams mean they are able to offer solutions designed to help increase ARPU, improve NPS and reduce operational costs through fewer support calls and truck rolls while also reducing subscriber churn,” claims the announcement.
“Plume’s industry-leading technology has been shown to cut service delivery intervals and operational costs, powering CSP digital service offerings that reduce churn,” said Dane Walther, general manager of Akamai’s Media and Carrier Business Units. “We’re coupling Akamai’s threat intelligence, which is powered by the Akamai Intelligent Edge Platform, mobile expertise and scale with Plume’s technology that is already deployed by more than 150 ISPs in over 21m homes and businesses to help fuel even greater adoption.”