Security ‘Dirty Word’

Telecom Management Taking Heed of Security, Under Watchful Washington Eye

May 20, 2011 by Mike Feazel|Top News

DALLAS -- The prospect of wireless security regulation is “changing the basic incentives of many management structures,” said Sam Curry, RSA chief technology officer. RSA is the security division of storage hardware and data recovery firm EMC. But officials at the TIA convention said that may not be happening quickly enough as malware for Android operating systems, for example, proliferates with a compounded growth rate of 400 percent monthly. “Security is a dirty word at many companies,” Curry said. “The language of risk at the C-level and elsewhere is not always fully developed.” Chief financial officers see security as just a cost to be managed, said Phil Attfield, CEO of Sequitur Labs. He said they need to start seeing security as a “profit center."

Operators’ approaches to security are “a mix,” Attfield said when asked whether service providers were prepared for the increasing threats generated by wireless devices. He said some are doing simulations and other activities to be really prepared, but others are “just denying there is a problem at all.” The problem, Attfield said, is that the technical and operational staff “can’t make a business case to the money people” for increased security.

But cyber is becoming a “buzz word” in Washington and elsewhere and incentives to improve security are beginning to appear, Curry said. He said potential fines of $1 million daily per incident generate attention. It’s “speculative” when agencies like the FCC, the SEC or the Department of Homeland Security will “put some teeth in” security regulation, he said: “That’s anyone’s guess."

The takeover of wireless handsets, particularly Android-based ones, is raising the security risk, said Rod Paterson, vice president of Nexus Telecom. He called Android “a wily beast” that’s hard to control. Curry agreed that Android is “a very poor security model,” partially because no one controls it even though it has become the dominant operating system. The problem, he said, is that it’s just a repackaging of the PC security system, which “didn’t really even work for PCs."

Another problem is the apps that run on the phones, said Norm Rajala, KDM Analytics president. “App writers probably don’t care if their apps are secure,” he said. “And even if they did, who would validate them?”

TIA Notebook

"Regulatory unrest” concerning the Universal Service Fund is causing some potential customers to continue to be unserved by broadband, said Sandy Vandevender, president of the National Telecom Co-op Association and CEO of Five Area Telephone Co-op. “We have got to be careful until we see what the USF situation will be,” he said, because a telecom could invest in infrastructure to serve the customers, only to end up without the USF funding to support it. “We can’t push too far, too aggressively, until we know what the rules will be,” Vandevender said.

Broadband stimulus funds are allowing Windstream to increase the penetration of broadband to 94 percent of its customers, from 90 percent, said CEO Jeff Gardner. He said “the last 10 percent” of WindStream’s rural customers will require subsidies to justify broadband, and the Rural Utilities Service has been “incredibly cooperative” in providing them. Windstream has qualified for nearly $200 million in broadband stimulus grants, to be combined with $60-$70 million of the company’s matching money. That allows the telco to serve areas where the line density is as low as five or six per square mile, he said. Gardner said the buildout will be completed “in a little over a year.”

Verizon will have LTE deployed in 175 markets by the end of the year, said Chief Technology Officer Anthony Melone. He said it looks like much of that capacity will be used by customers for video, which now “permeates everything.” One problem, Melone said, is that standards bodies need to move “quicker.”

Concerns about whether networks will scale up quickly enough to meet demand can be alleviated if network operators “plan for scale and flexibility” rather than for customized applications, said Rose Schooler, Intel general manager, Infrastructure Division. She said that means they should move additional intelligence as close to the consumers as possible, insist on openness and an extendable architecture. There now are “too many boxes, too many connections,” Schooler said. “It’s becoming very cumbersome.” She said a single, more-open and intelligent box could replace many.

The number of wireless network products returned as defective in the first month after delivery fell 21 percent between 2008 and 2010, according to a study by the industry standards group Quest Forum. The improvement was even better in the amount returned as defective in the first year, down 35 percent, and the long-term defective rate, down 80 percent, Quest Forum said in a paper released at the TIA convention. Quest Forum was set up to develop the TL-9000 industry quality standard, and said purchase of equipment meeting the standard contributed to the improvement.

Phase 2 of the TIA standard for femtocells will be released in the third quarter, said Betsy Covell of Alcatel-Lucent, chair of the TIA standards group on core network standards. She said the group is starting to look into the need for TIA-developed cloud connectivity standards, and talking about creating standards for converting broadcast TV for delivery to multimedia devices. Meanwhile, a standard for evaluating multimedia transmissions was released in April by a joint TIA/ITU-T standards development group, said Chair Jack Douglass of PacketStorm.