Operators’ greatest fear about moving to virtualized network is that security will be compromised, and many vendors see this as a big opportunity. Nokia has announced a dedicated security unit, which will focus on ‘baking in’ security into mobile broadband equipment.
Marc Rouanne, EVP of mobile broadband, said that the firm wanted to enable cellcos to develop business models around security and make this a ‘positive differentiator’. Mobile infrastructure is now Nokia’s core business, following the sale of its devices business to Microsoft, but despite recent improvements in financial performance, the vendor still struggles to narrow the gap with Ericsson and Huawei. It reorganized itself last year to specialize only in mobile broadband, and has made some strong moves to differentiate itself in emerging areas such as flexible software-driven networks.
Now it will add security to its list of value-adds. ‘The new security unit will bring together security experts and talent from across the company ‘ customer operations, global services and technology & innovation teams, for example ‘ with the aim of tackling the full set of requirements for robust telco security,’ said Rouanne.
He added: ‘We will continue to encourage industry dialog and knowledge sharing in terms of security research to improve awareness of this crucially important area of telco business, including with open source software. This will become critically important as mobile broadband networks are starting to evolve towards the cloud.’ This is because moving network elements to the cloud means resources may be physically located beyond the operator’s direct control, and may be shared with others.
Nokia plans to launch a mobile broadband security centre in Berlin for knowledge exchange with customers, business and research partners, and public authorities. The company has been working with the OpenSSL project as well as partners such as Juniper, F-Secure and CheckPoint. The last of these acquired Nokia’s security appliances business in 2008 but has continued to work closely with the Finnish vendor, while Nokia is getting closer to Juniper, which provides it with some of the converged and backbone elements to complement its mobile-only stance.