Michelle Donegan is a tech writer who has covered the communications industry for more than 25 years on both sides of the pond. Having worked for various industry titles, including Communications Week International, Total Telecom and Light Reading, she specializes in mobile network technology trends.
London-based cybersecurity company BullGuard has expanded its Dojo Intelligent Internet of Things (IoT) Security Platform with a software-based version that supports 5G and Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) architectures, which will enable communication service providers (CSPs) to offer smart home security services to their customers over fixed and mobile networks.
The new product, called DIP Edge, is a virtualized IoT security gateway that CSPs can deploy on a variety of computing platforms, including bare metal and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) platforms, at the edge of the network. The DIP Edge virtual network function (VNF) offers CSPs the ability to provide IoT security and parental controls on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) basis to consumers.
BullGuard’s move is indicative of the way 5G will change the way CSPs design networks and deliver services. With 5G, CSPs are expected to leverage technologies including NFV, edge computing and Software-Defined Networking (SDN) with aim of making their networks more efficient, flexible, highly scalable and better able to support service innovation. MEC, in particular, is expected to be an essential new architecture for enabling a new high-bandwidth and low latency 5G applications.
Securing the 5G Smart Home
Just like BullGuard’s consumer-oriented Dojo product, DIP protects Wi-Fi-connected IoT devices in the home. The platform has an automatic device discovery feature, vulnerability scanner, managed firewall, prevention of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks as well as behavioural analysis based on machine learning and artificial intelligence. It also supports a range of parental control and content filtering features.
With DIP Edge, consumers can sign up to a CSP’s service and any device that uses the home or mobile network is automatically secured, according to the company.
The virtualized DIP Edge version has the added benefits for CSPs of deployment flexibility, scalability and the ability to automate the process of moving VNFs across hardware resources in the network as required.
Yossi Atias, General Manager, IoT Security, at BullGuard, said: “The intersection of 5G and IoT presents huge business potential and service innovations for CSPs and consumers, but also introduces a new set of cybersecurity threats to the existing threat landscape – one that requires an entirely new approach to securing the massive amount of vulnerable IoT devices.”
The smart home is a big opportunity for CSPs, according to a recent Accenture survey, and could see profits for CSPs of $100 billion by 2025. The survey found that consumers are looking for an “out-of-the-box” experience from a single provider than can take care of support and security for smart home services. From a survey size of 26,000 consumers, 71% of respondents said they would choose a CSPs for the connected home.
With DIP Edge, BullGuard is offering CSPs new ways to provide IoT security services for smart homes that are ready for 5G and MEC architectures.
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