The global telecom industry was valued at $1.74 trillion in 2019, and poised to grow at a CAGR or 5% until 2027. The exponential rise in mobile subscribers, rapid migration to wireless communications and the promise of 5G is reason to believe this industry is only on the upswing. At the same time, the telecom industry remains one of the most vulnerable to cyberattacks. In 2018, 43% of telcos worldwide fell prey to DNS-based malware, and 81% took more than three days to apply a security patch on their communication network servers.

For an industry this vulnerable to bad actors, 2020 was undeniably stressful. A report by telecom analytics firm Subex stated that 2020 was ‘the most profitable year so far for hackers’. The pandemic forced employees across industries outside the safe confines of perimeter-based security systems (what office spaces typically offer) and to take refuge in under-prepared and vulnerable home networks. The past year witnessed an unprecedented increase in endpoints, networks and cloud adoption – mostly on unsecure networks and with less than ideal intervention from security experts – opening the floodgates for bad actors to make their moves.

For Bangalore-based telecom analytics provider Subex, a concentrated move to extensive wireless communications and software-defined critical infrastructure means the solutions to combat threats have to be agile. The company, which claims to manage about a fifth of global telco traffic, works with some of the biggest companies like Telefonica, Saudi Telecom Company, Airtel, Vodafone, Jio, Optus and T-Mobile among others. CTO Suresh Chintada, a career professional in telecommunications, has spent 25+ years in companies like Motorola Mobility, ARRIS and Commscope, having built and scaled global software engineering in telecom, cable, mobile and wireless networking. He joined Subex in October 2020 and is mandated with the company’s product management strategy, engineering & Subex AI Labs. 

Revenue leakage, revenue risk, DoS/DDoS attacks and fraud remain among the biggest threats to telcos, but the incidence of fraud has especially precipitated in the past decade. With more customers adopting digital platforms, the handheld device has become the sole gateway for crucial transactions for customers, as well for adversaries to orchestrate well-coordinated strikes. Chintada says, “Our research indicates that in the past year, identity fraud accounted for 20% and bypass fraud accounted for 15% of all incident-related losses alone. What has dipped is roaming fraud, presumably because travel allover took a hit. Revenue fraud still remains a huge global trend, accounting for nearly 13% of losses by value. In addition, spam calls have shot up in the past year. 2020 was a very diverse year for hackers across the board,” he says.

So what is Subex doing to help its coveted telco customers? The company was named as a leader in Fraud Management and Security Solutions in Telecom by Gartner in 2016, and runs the largest threat intel facility in the world, comprising IoT and ICS focused honeypots from 400 architectures in 62 locations. Subex works with telcos to safeguard assets from cyberattacks by securing endpoints and detecting threats using realtime intelligence, and this is achieved through what the company calls digital trust. “Digital trust is a three-tiered framework of risk mitigation, identity & security and intelligence & privacy, and is built into all our products and solutions. We are living in an increasingly interconnected world personally and professionally. It is imperative that a tight circle of trust is developed, to ensure customer experience is always positive,” explains Chintada.

In the Global Threat Report launched by Subex in early 2020, India emerged as one of the top countries in APAC exposed to cyber threats, and New Delhi ranked in the top 10 cities globally drawing the most number of attacks in 2020. India also accounts for 3% of the total malware detected globally, and there’s been a 34% increase in inbound cyberattacks from 2019.

This is where Subex’s AI Labs – one which falls directly under Chintada’s purview as CTO – is gaining more relevance “When it comes to finding cyberthreats, it is like looking for a needle in a haystack – and this needle is sometimes sufficient to disrupt vast networks. This is where AI can have a significant impact on operations to detect, diagnose and learn from the vastly changing threat landscape.” Subex AI Labs was started three years ago with a charter to embed AI in Subex’s product suite. This lab based in Bangalore functions across development, delivery, fulfilment and operations. Some of the popular products include the Alternate Credit Scoring Model, e-KYC module for verification using AI and CrunchMetrics – an AI based anomaly detection, causation and alert engine.

While AI is quickly becoming a crucial element of Subex’s solutions suite, IoT device security is the first stepping stone to building any reliable digital product. While the company already has Subex Secure – an IoT security coverage solution, it also offers a state-of-the-art, completely integrated IoT lab that augments smart city device protection. This IoT lab was first launched in Florence, Arizona in 2019 with the dual purpose of building awareness on cybersecurity for local lawmakers and develop tactical intervention in cyber security relying on intelligence. Chintada is hopeful this acclaimed model will be adopted in India too, which has an ambitious smart city mission for over 100 towns and cities.