F-Secure has been picked by Kaon Broadband to help power Kaon’s new Quantum Open Standard Platform, which is focused on connected home security.
F-Secure says it now has business relationships with over 200 ISPs globally. It cites some research it collected in a recent survey, which suggests that 84% of consumers believe it was important to protect all Internet-connected devices in their home. The more exciting finding is that some 72% of that group said they were willing to pay for that protection.
It has been shown that consumers are willing to pay for premium WiFi, usually in the form of a whole-home monitoring app and perhaps a suite of mesh nodes to extend the range of the original access point. This has been a way of increasing ARPU, as well as improving the customer experience – as shoddy WiFi is a major pain point and a very good reason to churn away.
So, if an operator has already started down the premium WiFi road, are they going to be able to add an additional few dollars in monthly costs for a security package? That could be a hard sale, mainly because the implication is that the operator is knowingly selling an unsafe system if the customer chooses not to pay for that security package.
Bundling the security features into the price of the premium WiFi, and in time the regular broadband offering, seems the safer approach. It will shortly become a unique selling point, for the first-mover operators, who can make big claims about the total security of the platform they provide to their customers.
There were some early warning signs in this sector. Back in December 2016, Deutsche Telekom was plagued by the Mirai malware, which went hunting for vulnerable broadband routers in Germany. Some 900,000 gateways were infected, according to the German BSI regulator. Thankfully, DT was able to issue patches for the SpeedPort W 921V and 723V Type B routers, and offer WiFi passes to customers affected by the downtime while the updates were being installed.
More and more devices in the home are becoming Internet-connected, and any operator that is not seriously investing in in-home cybersecurity systems is taking on a reputational risk.
F-Secure Sense is essentially a monitoring application, looking for problems in the home network traffic. It looks to take on the security workloads for devices in the home that can’t run similar software, either because they lack the hardware and software capabilities to run the required code.
“Security can be a difficult challenge for consumers to tackle. The range of services, solutions, and companies is expansive, and information about their capabilities and how to use them can be confusing,” said F-Secure’s VP of business development, Paul Palmer. “Internet service providers are consumers’ preferred choice to provide solutions to secure connected homes and smart devices in a fast and painless way, and we’re thrilled to work with Kaon Broadband in making connected home security even easier for more people to be protected online.”
Kaon Quantum is described as a versatile platform that enables dynamic services for home networks. Kaon adds that it is based on open source and industry standards, namely OpenWrt, RDK-B, the prpl Foundation’s prplMesh, prplWrt and prplSecurity (collectively called prpl feeds), and the Broadband Forum’s User Services Platform (USP).
Assia, Domos, Incognito, Infosec Global, OpenSync and ReversingLabs are also on board, as well as F-Secure. Kaon will provide its CPE app store to operators, taking for itself a role as an “enabler of third party service applications. Any commercial licence is discussed, agreed and contractual between operator and third party service provider. Kaon is only providing the infrastructure to operators to have these services available minimizing the operations constraints. Our only responsibility is to make sure that our CPE APP Store contains pre-certified applications to guarantee seamless integration and customer experience.”