Telecom: IoT Threats

Background

Telecom companies face significant Edge/IoT threats in their network infrastructure, and securing it is crucial to avoid service outages, connectivity interruptions, and cyber attacks. The client is a major telecommunications company that offers a plethora of business services including high-speed internet, landline solutions, and VoIP.

The challenge

Our client noticed a big gap in their cybersecurity posture when they realized that endpoint edge devices enabled by IoT technology posed one of its biggest vulnerabilities for unauthorized access to their network, with too many red flags coming up frequently.

With an escalating volume and severity of cyber attacks caused by IoT devices in enterprise partners, the client was in dire need of more sophisticated security to position itself as a trusted partner.

With this in mind, the client checked to see where the company's security measures fell short. The team quickly found they had some major blind spots. They didn't know what assets were connecting to the network, what assets needed patches, or what devices were vulnerable.

There was no visibility, and the client had no idea how vulnerable they were. They didn't have a way to keep track of threats and weaknesses for their many assets, which ran different versions of operating systems and had different configurations. They knew that if they didn't get the network visibility, end users and enterprise clients could have serious service outages, and they couldn't afford to take that risk.

It was imperative for our client to partner with a comprehensive cybersecurity solution provider who could strengthen and improve their security posture to avoid service outages, disruption, connectivity interruptions, asset abuse, system hijacking, and IoT-based attacks, to name a few.

The solution

As the amount of Internet of Things data and devices grows quickly, it creates a huge and complicated attack surface that is a big risk for telecommunication operators and the economy as a whole.

After careful evaluation of several vendors, the client decided to leverage AI EdgeLabs to reduce their cyber attack surface via advanced network visibility, threat intelligence software for early threat detection, and automated incident and remediation protocols in real-time. By protecting their IoT infrastructure and network, our client can focus on scaling operations confidently by staying safe and productive.

AI EdgeLabs solution: Combining network visibility and vulnerability management

IoT cybersecurity requires new ways or approaches to protect IoT infrastructure connectivity, especially as it moves closer to the edge. For the client, both the enterprise and end user clients were exposed to greater IoT risks after the pandemic thanks to remote work as the number of unsecured IoT devices grew, permeating nearly every organization’s business network.

The client began to collaborate with AI EdgeLabs to have technology that easily fits into their existing deployments and gives them more visibility across their network, accurate threat detection, and actionable data-driven information for interoperability in operational technology (OT), information technology (IT), and IoT environments.

Benefits for the Telecommunications industry

The implementation of AI EdgeLabs’ automation for IoT security helps Telco companies by:

• Identifying network ports where suspicious devices were located and disabled said port and/or devices.
• Collecting monitoring and reporting data from suspicious endpoints for deeper analysis.
• Suspended compromised accounts and halted account access for all suspicious devices.
• Killing infected connections by updating access control lists with smart firewalling.
• Discontinuing irregular or blacklisted processes on critical devices with automated incident response protocols.
• Improving security posture, network threat detection, and malware detection.
• Addressing the new and emerging concerns of their rapidly growing IoT infrastructure.
• Stopping IoT-based attacks before they even had the chance of causing harm.
• Alerting the network and security teams with real-time information about threats and attacks.
• Setting up a distributed defense infrastructure that was easy to scale.