Karmendra Kohil Ceo&Directorsecureyes

PERSPECTIVE
Telecom turmoil –
Cybersecurity
emerges as top
priority amidst rising
threats
Cybersecurity has swiftly risen to the forefront

as the most pressing concern for the
telecommunication industry. This urgency is
underscored by the industry’s role in managing
vast amounts of private and confidential
information through its critical communication
networks. Our reliance on telecom companies
to safeguard our personal and financial data,
whether it is phone calls, text messages, online
banking, or shopping, is immense. Moreover,
telecommunication, deemed an essential
service, is the bedrock of a country’s economic
growth, infrastructure, and connectivity. A cyber
security breach of this service could have
catastrophic implications, both for individuals
and corporations.
The telecom sector is under siege, with cyber-
attacks on the rise, according to CheckPoint
Research (CPR) data. The increase is a
staggering 51 percent, catapulting the industry
to the third most vulnerable sector after the
government and finance/banking sector.
Geopolitical influences are exacerbating this
rise, making understanding the evolving threat
landscape more critical than ever.
With the increasing use of mobile devices for
multi-factor authentication across various
applications, telecom networks are becoming
more attractive targets for hackers. These
attacks can take different forms, such as
disrupting or downgrading services, using
distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks or
attempting to breach private and sensitive data.
The web infrastructure and security company
Cloudflare reported that the
telecommunications industry is facing an
increased threat of distributed denial-of-service
(DDoS) attacks. Thus, safeguarding against
these potential threats is crucial in the telecom
industry and will continue to be so in the future.
In early 2024, CloudSEK, a cyber-security firm,
reported a major security breach. The breach
exposed the personal information of 750 million
Indian telecom users, including their names,
mobile numbers, addresses, and Aadhaar
details. Threat actors from CyboDevil and
UNIT8200 put customers’ data on sale for USD
3000 on the dark web. According to CloudSEK,
the size of the leaked dataset, which amounted
to 1.8 terabytes, poses an alarming threat to
security risk. A surge of recent data breaches
within the US telecom organizations has
resulted in over 74 million private customer
records, including entities like Verizon, AT&T,
T-Mobile, and US Cellular, surfacing on the
dark web, according to the Cyble Research and
Intelligence Labs.
The magnitude of these breaches underscores
the substantial risks confronting the sector and
underlines the imperative of telecom companies
to prioritize security. Often, these breaches
stem from vulnerabilities in IT infrastructure,
process gaps, and weaknesses in managing
third-party vendors and managed service
providers (MSPs), among a multitude of other
reasons. This emphasizes the intricate security
hurdles telecom companies face and the
urgency of proactive security investments.
As these attacks evolve into more sophisticated
forms, detecting and addressing them is
becoming a formidable challenge. This is
particularly true given the fact that skilled actors
can breach telecom providers and engage in
surveillance of phone lines, mobile data, and
instant messaging or video calls. Despite this,
the industry faces numerous cyber security
challenges, particularly in the era of artificial
intelligence (AI) and the rapid expansion of 5G
and the Internet of Things (IoT), making the
telecom infrastructure and ecosystem
significantly complex and hence prone to
various vulnerabilities. The pace at which these
attacks are advancing necessitates immediate
action and heightened vigilance.
Securing telecom networks now and in the
future
While the telecom industry is expanding with
exciting new technologies, putting appropriate
and focused efforts to secure this infrastructure
is equally important. Telecom systems can be
vulnerable to various attack vectors, making the
need for proactive protection with robust cyber-
security measures more pressing than ever. To
ensure the safety of our networks and the
smooth running of essential services, CSPs
must devise comprehensive strategies that
encompass standardization, development,
deployment, and ongoing operations.
It may seem daunting to consider the various
threats that exist in the telecom landscape.
However, it is important to remember that
despite the cunning techniques, persistence,
and capabilities of threat actors, there are still
ways to protect yourself and your networks.
This battle between threat actors and security
systems has been ongoing for decades and
continues to evolve.
When it comes to ensuring the security of your
systems, all efforts must be taken toward
implementing unified cyber-security control
frameworks and best practices to ensure
appropriate cyber-security governance, risk
management, and compliance, which is
essential to secure the process, technologies,
and people aspects within such telecom
ecosystems. Further, it is important to follow
established best practices, such as the zero-
trust approach – where trust is granted based
on the principle of never trust, always verify for
each and every request of users/systems.
While zero trust is not a one-size-fits-all
solution, it is a rigorous approach that
incorporates proven techniques at various
levels in the network, systems, and
applications. In addition to following best
practices, it is important to prioritize security
principles, leverage automation, maintain cloud
hygiene, design secure cloud architectures,
invest in skill development, and support industry
standardization. Equally important is the need
to collaborate with peers and authorities to
share information and collectively strengthen
defences against cyber threats.
(The author is the CEO & Director, SecurEyes,
a pure-play cyber-security consulting, services,
and products company that also provides
cyber-security training and education. The
author can be reached
at [email protected]).

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PERSPECTIVE

Cybersecurity has swiftly risen to the forefront

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