Chances are, your telecom provider has more personal information about you than you’re comfortable with, and maybe even more than you’re aware of.
The fact that they have this information, in and of itself, isn’t so bad. The issue is: What happens if that information in compromised?
That’s not exactly a far-fetched possibility. In 2014, Orange, France’s largest telecom group, was affected by data breach where hackers stole personal details of more than a million customers.
Protecting critical information like names, addresses and credit card numbers is a main reason that security software is becoming hugely important for all the enterprises, government organizations and SMEs in the telecom sector.
So important that the security software market in the telecom industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of 13.31% from 2014-2019.
Cyber threats in telecom
The telecom industry is becoming a major target for hackers. As we mentioned before, the industry has access to a lot of personal data, which is an attractive prospect for those with malicious intent. On top of that, disrupting the critical IT that makes up the telecom industry can have dire consequences on network infrastructures.
And continuous expansion in data transmission over telecom networks has only increased concerns over data privacy and security breaches. VoIP, mobility and cloud computing have all been hugely beneficial for the telecom sector, but each new technology presents its own unique set of challenges—including the risk of exposing the industry to more cyber-attacks and advanced persistent threats. As the telecom industry serves financial, infrastructure, and government agencies, the adoption of security software to mitigate the risk of cyber-attack has become imperative.
High complexity and cost will be major market hurdles
Installing security software for a large organization is no easy task. The solutions themselves don’t come cheap, and even after purchase, telecom service providers need efficient IT staff to install and maintain the software. In addition, enterprises in the telecom industry need to train their employees to make good use of the applications.
To make matters worse, the constant addition of new security products is resulting in integration issues and causing systems to slowdown. This results in customer dissatisfaction and may ultimately lead to customer attrition.
Solutions provided by vendors should integrate seamlessly with not only third-party solutions, but also with older versions. However, this may add to the complexity of security solutions and may result in operating or interface issues at the end-user level.
So while the general consensus is that these products are necessary in the telecom sector, there’s still a lot of work that remains to be done on the implementation side of things, to facilitate widespread adoption of security software in the telecom industry.
