Mobile World Congress (MWC) Barcelona serves as the telecommunication industry’s beauty pageant – showing off their latest innovations to the world. Mobile network operators, managed service providers, technology vendors, integrators, analysts, standards organizations, enterprises, and the press all gather from across the globe to see what has been implemented today and to imagine – as well as discuss, debate, and demonstrate – the technologies, capabilities, and services of tomorrow.
Communication Service Providers (CSPs) play a critical role in making sure that this vision for tomorrow becomes a reality. Delivering greater value (and therefore generating more revenue) in today’s dynamically evolving digital ecosystem is driving CSPs to adopt new technologies, extend their capabilities and deliver new services and use cases to existing and emerging industries and market segments. This has required them to transform and reshape themselves to ensure the delivery of digital value to digital-driven customers and businesses operating in a digital world.
By default, extending services and use cases also extends the attack surface and introduces new risks, both to the CSP and its customers and partners. The evolution of technology, services, and the larger digital ecosystem (customer, partners, technologies, services) have combined to create an opportunity for cybercriminals to find new ways to break into and exploit weak links in order to carry out their attacks. To ensure the availability, integrity and continuity of every digital ecosystem, security needs to play a major role in the services any CSP provides.
To achieve this, CSPs need to pay great attention to the different roles security must play in their evolution:
- Security solutions need to support the underlying technologies being implemented to protect the growing set of services and related value.
- Security must ensure the availability and SLA of services and use cases.
- Security also need to protecting CSP customers, including maintaining the integrity privacy and of communications while also securing customer data and resources.
- Finally, security also needs to play a role as a differentiator and revenue generator for the CSP.
Let’s take a few examples around two hot topics:
- Managed SD-WAN service: What are the security challenges of allowing direct internet breakouts for distributed customers? What are the possible solutions, and how can these help better position the service, including by providing more value and revenue?
- 5G: How does the attack surface and related risks change when 5G-enabling technologies and architectures are designed and implemented? How can a limited set of security tools be used to mitigate these risks, and can they be integrated into or be an extension of security tools already in place? What is the role of security once services go beyond connectivity and into platforms and applications?
Fortinet’s focus at this year’s Mobile World Congress will touch both on security in the evolving technologies and architectures of CSPs, and on the tools needed to secure customer-facing services and use cases, from connectivity and applications to platforms and the cloud. These include:
- How to deliver a managed SD-WAN service with embedded, state-of-the-art secure cloud connectivity – allowing managed service providers to natively deliver both scalable SD-WAN services and security to their enterprise customers using a common platform and orchestration tools. This integrated, two-pronged approach facilitates go-to-market, enables revenue growth, and speeds return on investment.
- Natively expanding Secure SD-WAN services to a robust Secure SD-Branch service, with managed support for WI-FI, LAN switching, and IoT control, allows for a native expansion of WAN edge services deep into the enterprise branch. This then provides end-to-end visibility, security, and control starting with enterprise employees and their devices, across the branch network, into the WAN, and out to the public cloud.
- Data plane and control plane security for 4G, and for the looming migration to 5G, protects mobile network operators during their migration journey, and ensures the integrity and continuity of evolving technologies and architecture to protect their mobile operations.
- Securing industry-specific 5G use cases, such as smart manufacturing and automotive, helps drive the Mobile Network Operator’s 4G/5G enterprise-based penetration and revenue growth by adding value services that go beyond cellular connectivity.
Fortinet’s executives and subject matter experts will be available to customers and delegates to discuss, share, and learn how we can partner together to deliver growth and innovation that is not only secure, but also enabled by security.
Come and join us at MWC 2020 in Hall 7K31, and book a meeting with our experts at: https://events.fortinet.com/MWC_2020
Read more about Fortinet’s recent customer momentum to learn why global service providers such as Orange Business Services, SoftBank Corp, and Ooredoo Kuwait choose Fortinet Secure SD-WAN.
