The results of the 2007 State of Security for Global Telecommunications Carriers survey mark a turning point in a competitive industry where the delivery of new services often has come at the expense of security considerations.
A key finding in this year's report reveals that only 36 per cent of survey respondents said security concerns were hindering their rollouts of Internet Protocol (IP) based service bundles including voice, video and data. That number is down sharply from 2006 when 55 per cent of carriers said security concerns were hindering delivery of new services.
“This survey shows what the market is already experiencing from recent mergers and acquisitions, including Verizon/Cybertrust and IBM/ISS: that security is a key ingredient for carriers as they move into next generation services and solutions,” said Current Analysis senior research director for telecom services Counse Broders.
“Clearly, those providers without a security solution in place risk losing their competitive edge.”
Security concerns still plague the telecom market especially in the area of next-generation, IP-based networks (NGNs).
NGNs represent a major evolution in telecommunications involving the convergence of voice, data and video onto one network.
The 2007 Global Telecommunications Carrier survey revealed that the wholesale migration to next-generation, IP-based architectures is imminent, with almost 85 per cent of respondents indicating that they will roll out this kind of architecture in the next five years.
However, fewer than half of respondents (46 per cent) said their companies had a strategy in place for mitigating security risks posed by NGNs.
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