 | Issue: | Latin America 2015 |
| Article no.: | 13 | |
| Topic: | NFV transition assurance: Overcoming revenue leakage, security and fraud | |
| Author: | Hezi Zelevski | |
| Title: | VP Marketing & Corporate Development | |
| Organisation: | cVidya | |
| PDF size: | 194KB |
About author
Hezi Zelevski, VP Marketing & Corporate Development for cVidya
Hezi Zelevski has extensive experience in the telecommunications industry, with over 15 years of managerial, operation and business development experience. He is responsible for Marketing, Business Development and M&A Strategy at cVidya, a leading supplier of Big Data Analytics solutions for communications and digital service providers. Prior to joining cVidya, Hezi was AVP Marketing and Business Development at ECtel Ltd., heading the marketing and product strategy for its fraud management and revenue assurance solutions. Prior to ECtel, he served as Director and department manager for Revenue Assurance at Cellcom (NYSE: CEL).
Article abstract
Hezi Zelevski explains how service providers can prepare themselves for the risks involved in NFV Adoption.
Full Article
A transformation is under way, following the rise of significant competition in the mobile communications space in recent years. Communication Service Providers (CSPs) have been looking for an alternative to traditional physical systems which, although reliable and secure, are not conducive for the fast pace of development demanded by modern subscribers. The solution, as proposed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) in 2012, is an industry-wide shift towards Network Functions Virtualization (NFV). The intended result is consolidation of all networking components – from servers to storage – on to a fully virtualized, cloud-based infrastructure, enabling CSPs to accelerate the deployment of new network services.
Like any new venture, the transition to NFV will entail some significant risks. While many are in the process of launching, there are currently no fully functional NFV networks in existence. In order to protect their revenues throughout and after the transition process, operators will need to be aware of the different risks in three particular areas and how best to mitigate them:
1. Revenue Leakage
2. Security and Fraud
3. Transformation Assurance
The transition towards NFV presents a daunting and potentially dangerous journey; one not to be embarked upon lightly. However, armed with the knowledge of the potential risks ahead, CSPs will be able to minimize risks when navigating these unchartered waters.
1. Revenue leakage
A significant danger in the transition stage of rolling out a new technology is that of revenue leakage. And the risk of revenue leakage will be intensified by the complexity of this transition period. The conversion to NFV will not happen overnight, as the larger established network operators cannot immediately cease all operations on the existing networking apparatus and move directly to a fully virtualized system. It will be a step-by-step process, taken in phases. Therefore, there will be a significant period of time in which service providers are unavoidably utilizing hybrid networks, comprising both current and virtual components. This will result in a highly complex environment for CSPs, as customers’ information will be located in different places and duplicated across numerous servers.
This complexity will be further exacerbated by the increase in Home Location Registers (HLRs) which contain all the network subscribers’ information. Currently, this information is securely housed in just one or two HLRs per mobile operator. However, with NFV, we will see a significant increase in HLRs – up to as many as sixty per operator. This added complexity will make CSP’s more susceptible to data error and consequentially increase the risk of revenue leakage. Additional complexity will arise due to the fact that these fully virtualized networks will be cloud-based. Therefore, CSPs will not only have to manage their own networks, but also those of numerous other operators involved.
As with any great undertaking, we cannot ignore the human element – its tendency to resist change and its susceptibility to error. With the move to virtualization and a cloud-based system, the operational process will shift perceptively from established network operations practices to the more agile IT methods. Being more IT orientated will require numerous people with new and different skills. Therefore, there will have to be an even longer transition process as workers need to be brought on board and educated in their new roles, whether that means training the relevant network people for IT domains or vice versa. During this challenging and protracted period, there will be an unavoidable number of errors in transactions and information transfers, further raising the risk of revenue leakage.
2. Fraud and security
The issue of fraud and security will always be significant when shifting to a completely new operating system. This will be even truer with the transition to virtualization. NFV is still too new a system for us to be able to predict the exact nature of fraud and security risks it will encounter. Indeed, as we have not yet witnessed the hacking of a fully functional NFV network, we do not yet have proof of all the expected scenarios.
However, what is certain is that as the end result of NFV will see everything transplanted onto virtual machines, the networks and data which they contain will be much more vulnerable in terms of security. In traditional physical networks, the entire network is located in a central building, secured with all physical switches and backups in the same location. Any potential hacker has to circumvent up to four channels to be able to take over an account. With NFV, everything will be virtual, and so once a hacker has succeeded in infiltrating a virtual switch or virtual HLR, they will potentially have immediate access to all network subscribers’ information. Any security breach will open up the whole network to any type of fraud as it is remotely call-commanded.
As we are only in the early stages of NFV adoption, operators are still preoccupied with trying to fully understand how they are going to work with the current hybrid networks, rather than with how to secure a fully functional NFV network. However, what is clear is that the lines separating the operators’ fraud and security departments – until now very much separate entities – are going to blur and merge. Traditionally, security departments have been almost solely focused with preventative measures – firewalls and intrusion detection devices – to reduce network vulnerability; while fraud departments are more involved with the business aspect of what happens after the fact, once the security has been bypassed. As we progress towards NFV, we will witness new scenarios involving both security and fraud departments. Therefore, the adoption of virtualization will necessitate greater cooperation between the security and fraud departments, in order to provide full coverage in terms of the network’s vulnerability. Just as the operations and engineering departments will move closer to the IT domain, so too will the fraud department as it evolves the security aspect.
With NFV still very much in its infancy, most preventative solutions are – at least for now – mostly hypothetical. The technology is simply too young and untested to be able to predict all potential security scenarios. Therefore, the primary requirement for fraud and security departments will be the ability to monitor the system in real time and, in the event of a security breach, immediately identify the threat, alert the operator and block any further intrusion.
3. Transformation assurance
Transformation assurance will be extremely important as the whole network process is going to shift; and transformations have traditionally proven challenging for telecom operators. Due to the significant politics involved in this transformation project, CSPs will use their own system integrators and, in the majority of cases, transformation officers, to lead this task. However, in addition to this, operators will require a qualified provider that can assure the transformation process every step of the way. One that has the ability to ensure the data transfer from one location to another and the new processes involved, guaranteeing that no errors arise during this transition.
There are few service providers with the requisite experience and expertise to offer this assurance for shifting to such a dramatically new technology. CSPs will need to ally with a solutions provider capable of assuring the information within the new equipment, aligning new equipment with the new billing system, handling agreements with new partners (there will now be multiple partners in this more complex environment), defining the charges between different partners and determining what will be on the different cloud environments. All this will require someone to look at the full picture, the end-to-end process, in order to ensure and validate the full transformation process.
It will be some time until we are fully aware of all the risks involved in the adoption of virtualization and how best to mitigate them – at least until the first fully functional NFV networks are up and running – and even longer until we are aware of all the potential security scenarios. Like the explorers of yesteryear, if CSPs are to survive the journey and ultimately thrive in the new environment, they will have to prepare themselves as best they can now.
