Intelligent CISO Issue 59 | Page 44

industry unlocked

TELCOS DEMONSTRATE COMMITMENT TO SECURITY COMPLIANCE STANDARDS

Deutsche Telekom , Orange , TIM , Telefónica and Vodafone have revealed their continued cooperation with the relevant national authorities to share information on security , implementation and management of Open RAN . Atos is also making strides in the security space as it launches its security offering for organisations looking to deploy private 5G networks and for telecom operators looking to enable integrated , automated and orchestrated security to protect and defend their assets and customers .
new report from

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Deutsche Telekom AG , Orange S . A ., TIM , Telefónica S . A ., and Vodafone Group Plc demonstrates the essential progress being made in improving the maturity and security of new Open Radio Access Networks ( Open RAN ). It addresses questions and challenges raised by experts and decision-makers within the industry .
Maturity and security are becoming increasingly important as the technology enters a new phase in its development , and throughout 2022 , the companies encouraged open discussions around these topics . With global deployments now reaching tens of thousands of sites ( mainly executed by new operators in greenfield deployments ), Open RAN is closing the gap with traditional mobile radio networks in terms of feature parity and performance , and further pilots are planned this year , leading to full-scale deployments across Europe in 2025 .
Entitled Open RAN MoU Progress Update on Maturity , Security and Energy Efficiency , the report also outlines the key areas of focus for the operators in 2023 . These include assisting with the development of Open RAN technologies to allow for wider deployment in highly populated towns and cities than is currently possible , strengthening cooperation with national authorities on security , including the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity ( ENISA ), and enhancing energy efficiency of all components , with particular focus on the radio transmitters and cloud infrastructure .
This is the latest in a series of reports available to vendors , existing and new , as well as other operators and stakeholders of the new Open RAN ecosystem from Deutsche Telekom , Orange , Telefónica , TIM and Vodafone . Under a Memorandum of Understanding ( MoU ) signed in early 2021 , the operators individually committed to working with all industry players to make Open RAN the technology of choice for future mobile networks , and bring its substantial benefits to consumer and enterprise customers across Europe .
The report sets out the operators ’ agenda for this year under the main topics of maturity , security and energy efficiency . In summary , the security aspect is as follows :
Security
The operators continue to cooperate with the relevant national authorities to share information on security , implementation and management of Open RAN . The companies requested to formally include Open RAN as part of the GSMA security assurance scheme ( NESAS ) and the EU ’ s 5G certification scheme defined by ENISA .
Reports such as the EU NIS Cooperation Group ’ s assessment of Open RAN security , published in June 2022 , have helped to develop strong security controls for specification , development , procurement , system integration , testing and operations .
As a result , Deutsche Telekom , Orange , TIM , Telefónica and Vodafone , as a minimum , will :
• Apply all the mandatory controls defined by the O-RAN ALLIANCE and 3GPP security specifications themselves and throughout the supply chain .
• Follow a Zero Trust approach to every vendor as they do today and ensure industry established standards and specifications such
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