When telecommunications service providers consider security threats today, they must think about more than just toll fraud. Focusing only on the money lost to fraudulent calls is short sighted and the UC industry needs to broaden the scope of its concerns. If service providers are like most businesses today, nearly 80% of them lack confidence in their cybersecurity and therefore they need to up their game because the consequences of not taking threats seriously could be devastating or, perhaps, even fatal to a service provider’s business.
“There are so many fronts to the topic of security,” explains Kevin Selkowitz, the Senior Director of Solutions Engineering at NetSapiens. “Traditionally, when we talked about it, we just discussed toll fraud, because that’s what really nailed the service providers. It’s what costs them money. It’s dollars out of the pocket. But now we’re seeing ransomware, bitcoin mining, and other novel threats.”
He adds that any discussion about security has to require a diversity of approaches and motivations. “Matters like data privacy are hard to quantify,” he says. “They may not hit you in the same way as a fraud bill, but you still need to think about them.”
No magic bullet
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Kevin Selkowitz[/caption]
Cybersecurity is vitally important, but there is no magic bullet and organisations must not try to cut corners or have a narrow focus when it comes to rolling out the appropriate protective measures. “We all need to have a holistic approach to security,” he emphasises.
Early in his career, Selkowitz admits to being a bit cavalier about cybersecurity and learned the importance of adequate protection after being hacked a couple of times. “Fortunately, they were minor, but once you get breached, you get the ‘religion’ of security real fast. I learned then that only the paranoid survive.”
“Security and privacy are not an afterthought when it comes to building our products,” says Selkowitz, who believes the best approach to developing and maintaining products with strong protection is to assume the identity of a hacker and think like a hacker.
