Next Generation Communications Blog
Security
Balancing Security and Privacy Using 4G LTE Enabled Video Surveillance
By Mae Kowalke
When it comes to public safety, how much oversight and surveillance is enough, and how much is too much? Where do you draw the line between safety and invasion of privacy? These are questions policymakers and law enforcement officials struggle with every day. There are usually no easy answers.
A good starting point is to look at the role technologies like video surveillance can play in public safety, and what applications such technologies are most effective for particularly for providing an adequate degree of situational awareness.
Video surveillance is very prevalent in the U.K. where the typical person is recorded 20 times a day. It is gaining ground in the U.S. where post-9/11 has made people feel less safe and created a desire to have their “guardians” always watching in public spaces. However, omnipresence for the sake of security has a price. It does invade personal privacy.
This concern has only grown as sophisticated video and network technologies like 4G LTE— which is increasingly the technology of choice for massively deployed machine-to-machine (M2M) monitoring solutions— enable video can be not just automatically captured but also quickly analyzed to, for example, use facial recognition to ID a person or check a license plate against records in a database.
Improving Safety for Train Passengers with Video Surveillance and Other Technology
By Mae Kowalke
Sustaining a successful public transportation system, such as train service, depends on that system being both convenient and safe. For train passengers, especially women, safety (both actual and perceived) can be a major issue.
In a recent article in TRACKTALK, “What puts women off using the train?” Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Associate Dean at University of California Los Angeles’ School of Public Affairs and Urban Planning, shined a light on the critical role video surveillance and passenger information systems (PIS) can play in helping female travelers feel safe. As she noted, “Dark and deserted stations and trains are understandably off-putting and can encourage people to seek alternative means of transport, or even not travel at all, to avoid feeling threatened, or in some instances becoming a victim of crime.”
New Revenue Opportunities Possible with the New Conversation Experience
By Susan Campbell
Service provider (SP) revenues are taking significant revenue hits from application and content providers (ACPs) as the disaggregation of content from physical access shifts value generation opportunities toward third parties. At the same time SPs are also attempting to ward off “free” offerings, such as people using things like Skype for making phone calls who are willing to put up with inferior quality, by attracting people to superior services they will pay a premium for. The challenge, which every day gains more urgency, is how to react to both trends.
The objective is to be relevant and central in evolving ecosystems and thereby be in a position to maximize new opportunities while minimizing risks. The vehicle for turning things around is embodied in the desirability of creating a new conversation experience with customers based on a holistic strategic approach.
A recent Alcatel-Lucent article, The Value of the New Conversation Experience highlighted the need for service providers to increase the average revenue per user and reduce churn, two of the major revenue corrosive issues. It focused on the reality that to accomplish these goals, SPs must quickly bring to market enhanced service bundles and also rapidly introduce innovative service offerings with compelling and differentiated perceivable value as critical to combating free services.
SIP CLF Will Simplify Network Management, Call Tracking and Troubleshooting
By Beecher Tuttle
Assessing the performance of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) servers in a multi-vendor environment is a difficult proposition for today's service providers. This issue is mostly due to the lack of common SIP call log standards, a reality that allows vendors to develop call logs based on their own format.
The myriad of call log formats acts as a barrier for service providers that want to review SIP transactions across multiple vendors, evaluate and troubleshoot their servers, and analyze call trends.
Fortunately, the answer to this concern – SIP CLF – has already been developed and is currently in the process of being standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).
Tools and Techniques for Securing Data in the Cloud
By Mae Kowalke
The acronym CIA is probably associated most commonly with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. But, in the realm of security for cloud services, CIA stands for Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability. These lie at the core of how to most securely store and transport data in cloud.
To gain trust from enterprise customers, cloud service providers must prove they are qualified to address customer concerns. Opportunities abound if they are able to prove that, because cloud services have many advantages for enterprises.
“Enterprises want transparent solutions that protect their data while making it accessible,” said Alcatel-Lucent’s Serge Tapia, head of security compliance, and Arnaude Fillette, security solution architect, in an Enriching Communications article, “Where’s My Data? Securing the Cloud.”
That nicely sums up the advantages of enterprise cloud services: transparency, accessibility, and security.
End-to-End Security for the Smart Grid
By Mae Kowalke
Around the world, electricity distribution infrastructure is being transformed using "smart grid" technologies. Although this is happening more quickly in some areas than others, the purpose is the same: secure energy supplies and ensure they remain viable.
This goes beyond security, of course, to profits – as such things always do.
“The bottom-line benefit is more efficient use of energy,” noted Peter Johnson, Vice President of Alcatel-Lucent’s Smart Grid division, in a GridTalk e-zine article, “Protecting the smart grid with today’s solutions,” about smart grid security.
In North America and elsewhere, the smart grid transformation is focused on moving toward solutions for the power industry based on converged IP/MPLS networks, which enable timelier reporting and better control. This is becoming more critical because technology in general is becoming less centralized, and security is therefore a more spread-out endeavor.
“Communications and other critical data are no longer contained inside traditional network boundaries, but now reach out to the edges where there is more opportunity for interception or attack, which means that more devices have to be protected,” Johnson noted.
Making sure there is a continual supply of affordable energy when it’s needed also requires building infrastructure that addresses data privacy and “the human element.”
Security, privacy and the human element (all components of “teleprotection”) are very much on the minds of decision-makers at AltaLink, which in 2010 began a four-year project to upgrade 12,000 kilometers (approximately 7,456 miles) of distribution and communication infrastructure in Western Canada.
Smart grid upgrades have now reached more than 65 of AltaLink’s 300 substations.
The multi-tier security system being put in place makes use of IP/MPLS intelligence, with centralized authentication and logging, security policies for each service, and a Layer 2 VPN firewall, among other capabilities
“We deploy industry best practices,” said Cory Struth, AltaLink’s Network Architect, in a GridTalk e-zine article, “Altalink: Implementing an end-to-end smart grid security strategy.” “We have centralized user management so that there is one button to push to take everybody off if necessary.”
While MPLS technology helps ensure a high level of data security, the biggest challenge is the human element.
“The technology itself is maybe 30 to 40 percent of the equation, with the human aspect the bigger wildcard in the whole migration,” said Clint Struth, Principal Engineer at AltaLink’s Telecommunications Networking division, in the article. “Trying to get the people to buy in, learn the technology, and fully understand it and be capable with it is a much more difficult process.”
Challenges and benefits are both inherent in smart grid deployments. This new type of ecosystem leverages diverse knowledge and technology, which makes it potentially more challenging to maintain – although if done right that need not be the case.
“Highly effective security can be designed into a deployment, and it will be far stronger and more effective than anything that has come before,” ALU’s Johnson said.
At least in the U.S., regulation is key to adoption of smart grid security.
Delivering the Dynamic Enterprise
The Dynamic Enterprise site, itself a highly interactive experience, features a variety of dynamically designed sub-sections to educate the business community on how to leverage converged communications to become more agile, including a clear definition of "dynamic enterprise," focusing on the connections between what Alcatel-Lucent calls the Four Pillars of the Dynamic Enterprise - network, people, process, and knowledge.
Collaborative Security: Shifting the Security Paradigm to Create Innovative Enterprise Security Solutions
In today's age of Web 2.0 and cloud computing, security can actually be a positive enabler for driving business performance. To achieve this objective, enterprises can benefit from having a corporate-wide strategy, or a "security blueprint," that allows the enterprise to be open for business and provides a trusted environment. On the other side of the coin, the rapid growth in communications technology has been accompanied by a similarly swift increase in security threats, cybercrime and the introduction of correlated security regulations. According to an Alcatel-Lucent white paper, "Created the Trusted, Dynamic Enterprise," early in 2009 industry experts presenting to the U.S. Senate committee hearing on improving cyber security estimated profits from the cybercrime economy totaled close to $1 trillion - more than the cash generated by drug crime. This was later reinforced in a report by Symantec in April 2009 that noted there was a 265 percent increase in malicious code threats in 2008 compared to 2007. However, adopting what the company calls a "trusted dynamic enterprise" philosophy, companies can position themselves to leverage the Internet to conduct day-to-day business while ensuring enterprise security. "We believe our philosophy around security is to really help our customers focus on leveraging new collaborative business models such as the cloud and Web 2.0 and it's really about managing risks, controlling data and controlling costs and understanding how to use security as a positive business enabler...rather than a detractor," said Cliff Grossner of security solutions marketing at Alcatel-Lucent, in a recent interview with TMCnet. Collaborative security in terms of creating innovative enterprise security solutions results in a trusted dynamic enterprise - trusted because enterprises provide the trusted environment for their employees to do their work, for their business partners who aren't being compromised, and trusted by their own customers because Alcatel-Lucent's customers are able to protect their data. Further, Alcatel-Lucent's brand of security is more about managing security from the network.
Key Factors Driving the Need for a Comprehensive Security Blueprint
A recent U.S. Government Accountability Office report warned that cyber-threats facing federal networks and the country's critical infrastructure are becoming increasingly sophisticated. And while the number of attacks is exponentially growing - security incidents grew by over 200 percent from fiscal year 2006 to fiscal year 2008 - the report concludes that the country is not optimally prepared to protect itself from such attacks.
Although this particular report is in reference to government networks, enterprise security is as vulnerable, if not more so. Rapid advances in communications technology have been accompanied by an equally rapid increase in security threats, the growth of cybercrime and the introduction of new security regulations.Best practices for managing events, policy and traffic on your network
Through its two components - the Alcatel-Lucent 9900 Detector (deployed in the packet core) and the Alcatel-Lucent 9900 Central (deployed in the NOC) - the 9900 WNG delivers a significant advantage to wireless operators looking for an edge over their competition, providing advantages in a number of areas, including operations, planning, security, engineering, marketing, and revenue assurance.
