Telecom Sector Security
The Telecom sector has witnessed huge growth especially in emerging economies of Asia, Africa and South America. This has resulted in rapid expansion of the network, addition of value-added services, and resultant increase in complexity of the entire setup. Often, security can get overlooked or kept on the backburner in the rush to increase market share and reduce costs. However, cyber-criminals don’t care for such economic realities, and they have begun to increasingly target telecom infrastructure, especially as it becomes IP-based with the arrival of LTE.

This combined with increasing regulations towards telecom security have created quite a challenge that telcos are seeking to address. Our experience with telcos have revealed that while there are a variety of security issues – some of these are solvable, while others will remain known risks till cost-feasible measures can be found to address them.

Telecom Security Threats:
Major threats to Telecom Security usually fall into the following categories:

  • Phone Fraud – Toll Fraud, Cramming, Telemarketing fraud, War dialing and so on
  • Theft - Data theft, network abuse, illegal data interception, unauthorized data modification (in billing or routing based processes)
  • Malware - Viruses, trojan horse
  • Spam – Sending Spam messages via SMS, MMS
  • Denial of Service attacks - Request flooding, DoS attacks against network infrastructure.
  • Data leakage – Penetrating billing and CRM systems to extract customer data
Typical Security Challenges
Telcoc face the following security challenges:
  • Vendor apathy
  • Lack of good testing tools
  • Lack of security know-how
  • Absence of proper testing setup
  • Absence of proper monitoring
  • Supply chain risks
How can NII help you?
At NII, we offer our Telecom Security Assessment services in the following domains:
  • LTE Equipment security testing
  • GSM Internet Data Access Pen-testing
  • GPRS Internet Data Pen-testing
  • SMS Spoofing and POC
  • Lawful Interception System/Gateway Security Audits
  • IVR Security Testing
  • Telecom SAP Implementation Security Assessment
  • X.25 Security Audit
  • SS7 Gateways & Process Security Review
Some of the telecom companies we have worked with already, include Vodafone, Saudi Telecom, Bahrain Telecom, Mobin Net (Iran), Tulip Telecom, and many others.

We suggest recommended controls and techniques for mitigating identified security threats.Through our quality security test reports, which provide clarity to top management and help prioritize actions for the security teamin taking the recommended steps for threat aversion and risk mitigation.

Further, we can work with your IT and network teams to help implement security solutions such as Cyber-Ark, SIEM, Web Application Firewalls, and others to address specific security challenges.

Contact us to know more how we can help enhance the security posture of your telecom infrastructure.

Previous AssessmentSCADA_and_ICS
Next AssessmentSharepoint Security