Intelligent CISO Issue 27 | Page 33

� PREDICTIVE INTELLIGENCE Middle East telecom giant scales out security for massive 5G-rollout with A10 Networks Thunder CFW When a Middle East telecom giant needed atscale protection to safeguard its 4G and 5G mobile networks, it turned to A10 Networks. The telecom leader wanted a high-performance, scalable and agile solution for its Gi-LAN firewall that would deliver high throughput to support tens of millions of subscribers. Introduction This premier service provider in the Middle East offers a broad variety of ICT solutions and digital services to consumers and businesses. Thirty million people rely on its mobile, fixed and Wi-Fi services to stay connected to the world, and the company also offers a broad range of IT, cloud and cybersecurity solutions to businesses. Challenge With digital connections an essential part of people’s personal and work lives, 4G traffic on the provider’s mobile network was rising sharply. An innovator, the telecom company launched 5G in 2019 and plans to build the largest 5G network in the Middle East. The telecom giant needed at-scale protection to safeguard its 4G and 5G mobile networks. The company had long relied on another vendor to provide firewall and carrier-grade network address translation (CGNAT) services for the GiLAN segment of its mobile network. But as traffic volumes steadily climbed, the performance of the firewalls began to lag. Limited throughput and degrading connections per-second performance could expose the network to attacks or an unsatisfying subscriber experience. But staying the course meant purchasing entirely new firewalls from the vendor. That required a large upfront capital investment, and bigger hardware also would consume more valuable space, power and cooling, adding to OPEX. The telecom leader wanted a highperformance, scalable and agile solution for its Gi-LAN firewall that would deliver high throughput to support tens of millions of subscribers. Selection criteria Like many service providers, this company deployed different Gi-LAN service functions on independent devices. But ultimately, this architecture makes the Gi-LAN more complex and inflexible. Instead of a traditional monolithic architecture, the provider investigated the value of a scaleout architecture with NFV. NFV provides many advantages in the virtualisation of network functions and the ability to develop infrastructures that are more flexible and scalable with a lower TCO. www.intelligentciso.com | Issue 27 33