Category Archives: Verizon

Aeris, AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Digi International, Fujitsu, IMC, Inmarsat, Intel, Internet of Things, Iridium, KORE, M2M, News & Analysis, Nighthawk Controls, Numerex, ORBCOMM, Rose Schooler, Synapse Wireless, Telecom Italia, Telit, Verizon, Wipro, Wyless

Intel, Wipro join IoT, M2M trade body to boost deployments

Intel and Wipro are joining the IMC

Intel and Wipro are joining the IMC

Intel and Wipro have this week joined the International M2M Council (IMC), a global trade association set up to represent Internet of Things vendors and service providers and boost volume IoT deployments.

The trade body, which does advocates on behalf of IoT vendors and service providers, claims to have over 10,000 members and is on track to grow by another 5,000 by the year’s end. In addition to Intel and Wipro companies on the IMC board of governors include Aeris, AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Digi International, Inmarsat, Iridium, KORE, Nighthawk Controls, Numerex, ORBCOMM, Synapse Wireless, Telecom Italia, Telit, Verizon, and Wyless.

“The IMC’s focus on business results suits our role as a provider of end-to-end IoT solutions very well,” said Vijay Anand V.R., practice director, IoT Business, Wipro Digital, who has also joined the IMC Board

“This trade group also has a truly global footprint that fits our business model and aspirations.”

Rose Schooler, vice president of the IoT Strategy Office at Intel, who also sits on the IMC board of governors said: “The IMC is an industry-leading professional organisation that is reaching out to adopters of IoT technology on a broad scale. The organisation is gaining an average of 275 new members per week – members that are developing, buying, and deploying IoT solutions. Clearly, there is a demand in the market to learn more.”

Both Intel and Wipro have accelerated their IoT efforts over the past few months. Earlier this year enterprise vendor Software AG and outsourcing giant Wipro teamed up to offer a platform for streaming analytics generated by Internet of Things sensors and devices.

Intel has also ramped up its collaborations in the space, teaming with Fujitsu in May this year to develop Internet of Things solutions for manufacturing, retail and public sector clients.

Americas, connected cars, Denso, Ford, General Motors, Internet of Things, IoT, Iteris, M2M, Navistar, News & Analysis, Qualcomm, Verizon, Xerox

Verizon, Qualcomm among Mcity partners testing IoT, automated cars

Verizon is teaming up with the University of Michigan to test connected and automated cars

Verizon is teaming up with the University of Michigan to test connected and automated cars

Verizon and Qualcomm are among 15 partners launching Mcity at the University of Michigan this week, a controlled testing environment for connected and automated vehicles that the project participants claim could clear the path for mass-market adoption of driverless cars.

The facility will allow researchers to simulate environments where connected and automated vehicles will be most challenged – for instance where road signs may be defaced by graffiti, or when traffic lights become faulty or break.

“There are many challenges ahead as automated vehicles are increasingly deployed on real roadways,” said Peter Sweatman, director of the University of Michigan Mobility Transformation Center. “Mcity is a safe, controlled, and realistic environment where we are going to figure out how the incredible potential of connected and automated vehicles can be realized quickly, efficiently and safely.”

Michigan – particularly the City of Detroit – has a longstanding (and to some extent troubled) history in automotive, but the University said the facility will help the State regain its leadership in the sector. The project builds on a 3,000 vehicle connected car project launched three years ago and co-funded by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation

As part of its participation with the project Verizon will be contributing its telematics technology, In-Drive, and is offering its own research into vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure technologies. It will also help explore various ways to combine mobility, telematics and IoT services.

Other project partners include Iteris, Navistar, Denso, Ford, General Motors, Qualcomm and Xerox; each partner is investing about $1m into the project over the next three years.

Amit Jain, director of corporate strategy, IoT verticals at Verizon said the project will help create new vendor-agnostic and OEM-agnostic services that could improve road and pedestrian safety.

“Placing the onus on OEMs only to deploy technologies such as Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC), for example, could take up to 37 years according to the National Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA). That’s why creating opportunities like Mcity to pool research and share best practices to expedite innovation is so important,” Jain said.

“Consider the fact that there are more than 30,000 fatalities in the US annually caused by vehicle accidents – of which 14 percent of those fatalities involve pedestrians. As part of our participation in Mcity, we will be involved in tailored research to explore how smart phones can be used to further enhance vehicle-to-pedestrian communications.”

Verizon has moved over the past few years to bolster its legacy M2M portfolio (industrial M2M, telematics) with the addition of new IoT services, which according to the telco now constitute a growing portion of its overall revenues – particularly connected cars. In a Q2 2015 earnings call with journalists and analysts this week Verizon’s chief financial officer Francis Shammo said that although IoT is still quite a nascent sector it raked in about $165m for the quarter and $320m year-to-date.

“As far as Internet of Things, we think that the transportation, healthcare, and energy industries in particular present great opportunities for us and we are very active fostering innovation in these areas,” Shammo said. “We are very well-positioned to capitalize on these new growth opportunities and we will continue to develop business models to monetize usage on our network and at the platform level.”

Deloitte, managed security, Managed services, Mike Denning, News & Analysis, Verizon

Verizon tries to woo CSOs with managed security offering

Verizon is boosting its managed security practice

Verizon is boosting its managed security practice

Verizon is throwing its hat into the managed security services ring this week, launching a managed cybersecurity and incident monitoring service targeted at large enterprises.

The Unified Security Services includes a pre-configured set of features managed by Verizon directly and designed to protect the network edge.

Verizon said it will provide service event monitoring, device alerting and 24/7 security support as well as patch management as part of the suite.

“With Unified Security Services, we have bundled together technology, human expertise and deployment services into one convenient offering,” said Mike Denning, vice president of Global Security at Verizon Enterprise Solutions.

“This solution is aimed at helping organizations — with little to no internal staff — better safeguard their networks, without adding complexity or more resources to their IT teams,” he said.

The suite will initially be rolled out in the US with plans to offer hosted versions globally in 2016.

The launch would suggest its partnership with Deloitte, announced in the Spring, is bearing fruit. In April the companies announced a partnership to deliver a comprehensive set of cybersecurity and risk-management solutions to enterprises.

As part of that deal Verizon said it would leverage its experience in digital forensics and managed services and Deloitte its cyber risk advisory services to deliver end-to-end incident response services.

News & Analysis, Salesforce, Software as a service, Tod Nielsen, Toopher, Verizon

Salesforce bakes security, compliance into native apps with Shield

Salesforce has launched Shield in a bid to improve confidence among highly regulated cloud adopters

Salesforce has launched Shield in a bid to improve confidence among highly regulated cloud adopters

Salesforce this week announced Salesforce Shield, a portfolio of “drag and drop” security and compliance assurance services that developers can bake into native Salesforce apps.

The Shield services include field audit trail and data integrity tracking, data encryption, archiving and event monitoring.

Salesforce said the services are already in use by some of the company’s clients in the financial services and healthcare services sectors.

“While many companies are leveraging the cloud to build apps at the speed of business, those in regulated industries have struggled to take full advantage of the cloud due to regulatory and compliance constraints,” said Tod Nielsen, executive vice president of Salesforce1 Platform, Salesforce.

“With Salesforce Shield, we are liberating these IT leaders and developers, and empowering them to quickly build the cloud apps their businesses need, with the trust Salesforce is known for.”

Salesforce said the move will help provide assurances to more heavily regulated sectors including developing applications with the Salesforce platform, particularly those that are learning more heavily on mobile platforms.

That said, mobile security has been a big focus for the firm in recent months. In April the company acquired Toopher, a Texas-based mobile authentication startup, and towards the end of last year the company joined Verizon’s dark fibre cloud interconnection service to give its customers more secure options for linking to its cloud platform.

Adam Famularo, banking, Financial Services, Infosys, Michael Reh, News & Analysis, Verizon

Infosys takes financial suite of Verizon Cloud

Infosys is deploying its core and digital banking suite on Verizon's cloud

Infosys is deploying its core and digital banking suite on Verizon’s cloud

Infosys and Verizon announced a deal this week that will see the Indian outsourcing specialist offer its financial suite of software services on Verizon’s cloud platform in the US. The move is part of a broader effort to update its strategy for the times and go all in on cloud.

The Finacle suite, targeted primarily at banks and credit unions, is a white label core and digital banking services solution. Infosys said offering the solution as a PAYG software as a service can make it less costly and more flexible to deploy.

“Providing real-time and compelling customer experience across multiple channels is a difficult task, even for the largest of financial institutions with significant resources,” said Michael Reh, senior vice president and global head of Finacle, Infosys.

“With Finacle solutions now available on Verizon Cloud, financial institutions of all sizes, across the U.S., will be able to provide the latest banking services to their customers without any major investment,” Reh said.

Adam Famularo, vice president, global channel, Verizon said: “Together, Finacle and Verizon will enable new flexibility for clients. Financial institutions will benefit from Finacle’s comprehensive solution coverage and high-performance platform hosted on the Verizon Cloud to help them improve agility, achieve sustainable, profitable growth and drive their business.”

Since 2014 Infosys has ramped up its cloud partnerships in a bid to shift its outsourcing business towards higher margin activities, and financial services seems to be a more promising sector for cloud growth than originally anticipated. Gartner for instance predicts that by 2016, more than 60 per cent of global banks will process the majority of their transactions in the cloud, and many are already migrating less sensitive functions.

Americas, Google, News & Analysis, Policy and Regulation, USA Freedom Act, USA Patriot Act, Verizon

USA Freedom Act passes ending bulk data collection

The USA Freedom Act will end bulk data gathering familiar to the PRISM programme and other NSA iniatiatives

The USA Freedom Act will end bulk data gathering familiar to the PRISM programme and other NSA iniatiatives

The USA Freedom Act, a bipartisan bill aimed at reforming the US Patriot Act that would among other things end kind of bulk data collection Edward Snowden revealed two years ago, passed the House or Representatives by a wide margin this week. The move may be welcome news to both telcos and cloud service providers alike, many of which lobbied hard for US surveillance reform.

The bill, which passed in a 328 for – 88 against vote, ends the bulk collection of communications metadata under various legal authorities, and not only includes telephony metadata collected under Section 215 but internet metadata that has been or could be collected under other legal authorities as well.

It will also allow companies to be more transparent with the demands being placed on them by legal authorities, and will create  new oversight and accountability mechanisms that will shed more light on the decisions reached by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), which has so far operated in a deeply secretive manner and with little interference.

“This bill is an extremely well-drafted compromise—the product of nearly two years of work.  It effectively protects Americans’ civil liberties and our national security.  I am very proud of the USA Freedom Act and am confident it is the most responsible path forward,” said Jim Sensenbrenner, Republican Representative for Wisconsin’s fifth district.

“If the Patriot Act authorities expire, and the FISC approves bulk collection under a different authority, how would the public know?  Without the USA Freedom Act, they won’t.  Allowing the PATRIOT Act authorities to expire sounds like a civil libertarian victory, but it will actually mean less privacy and more risk.”

“Let’s not kill these important reforms because we wish the bill did more.  There is no perfect.  Every bill we vote on could do more,” he added.

Others, including Ted Lieu (D-CA), voted against the proposed reforms because the bill didn’t go far enough.

“While I appreciate a number of the reforms in the bill and understand the need for secure counter-espionage and terrorism investigations, I believe our nation is better served by allowing Section 215 to expire completely and replacing it with a measure that finds a better balance between national security interests and protecting the civil liberties of Americans,” Lieu said.

“Beyond Section 215, I am troubled that the USA Freedom Act would leave in place Sections 505 and 702, provisions that also allow sweeping data collection and backdoor searches circumventing encryption that can result in the collection of information of US citizens not identified in warrants.  The loopholes left in place will continue to undermine the trust of the American people.”

“A federal district court struck down the NSA’s spying on Americans and called the NSA PRISM program ‘Orwellian.’ A federal appellate court ruled last week that the NSA’s bulk collection program was illegal. Despite these two court decisions, the NSA continues to operate its unconstitutional and illegal programs.”

Many cloud service providers and telecoms companies have for the past two years (since Snowden’s NSA-related revelations primarily) voiced concerns that failure to reform US surveillance practices could alienate customers both foreign and domestic. Microsoft and Google have been particularly vocal about this in recent months.

Google’s vice president public policy and government affairs in the Americas Susan Molinari trumpeted her support of the bill. She said the bill takes a big step forward in surveillance reform “while preserving important national security authorities.”

“It ends bulk collection of communications metadata under various legal authorities, allows companies like Google to disclose national security demands with greater granularity, and creates new accountability and oversight mechanisms.”

“The bill’s authors have worked hard to forge a bipartisan consensus, and the approved bill is supported by the Obama Administration, including the intelligence community. The bill now moves to the other side of the Capitol, and we hope that the Senate will use the June 1 expiration of Section 215 and other legal authorities to modernize and reform our surveillance programs, while recognizing the importance of protecting Americans from harm,” she added.

US-based telco Verizon declined to comment on the passage of the bill.

John Chambers, Networks, News & Analysis, SDN, Verizon

Verizon confirms SDN overhaul plans

Verizon is revamping its network

Verizon is revamping its network

Verizon has confirmed publicly its plans to develop and implement a software defined networking infrastructure, working alongside Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Ericsson and Nokia Networks, among others, reports Telecoms.com.

The US telco claims its SDN project will enable a transformation of its existing network, introduce new operational efficiencies and accelerate rapid and flexible service delivery to its customers. In outlining its intended overhaul, Verizon has worked with its aforementioned technology partners to create an SDN network architecture overview document.

The document, the telco claims, has included all interface specifications, reference architectures, plus requirements for both the control layer and forwarding box functions. It appears, as a consequence, Verizon is giving its suppliers very specific requirements for the upgrade, and that each partner is expected to deliver unique and bespoke elements to allow it to achieve the business and technical benefits of an SDN-enabled network.

The business case for implementing SDN has been well documented, such as elastic and scalable network-wide service creation, as well as dynamic resource allocation and network automation. Speaking of the announcement, Verizon’s chief information and technology architect, Roger Gurnani, reckons harnessing SDN will enable Verizon to more agilely deliver new services to its customers.

“Verizon and our key technology partners have always focussed on providing high-performance networks for our customers, and with this SDN architecture we will continue to ensure our network and services meet the needs of our customers, today and in the future,” he said.

Cisco’s chairman and CEO John Chambers, meanwhile, has targeted IoT as the next big growth opportunity for telcos, and says SDN will help enable its monetisation.

“This will become the foundation for innovative, new Verizon services and applications,” he said. “Both companies share a vision to transform the entirety of the network architecture to achieve the speed and operational efficiency required to meet the needs of today, as well as capture the growth opportunities to monetize with the Internet of Everything over the next decade and beyond.”

DDOS, Deloitte, Ed Powers, Mike Denning, News & Analysis, Verizon

Deloitte, Verizon team on cybersecurity

Verizon and Deloitte are teaming up on cybersecurity

Verizon and Deloitte are teaming up on cybersecurity

Deloitte and Verizon Enterprise Solutions have announced a partnership that will see the two firms deliver a comprehensive set of cybersecurity and risk-management solutions to enterprises.

The deal will see Verizon leverage its experience in digital forensics and managed services experience and Deloitte’s cyber risk advisory services to deliver end-to-end incident response services.

“As the cybersecurity landscape becomes more formidable, this alliance enables enterprises to better prepare for today’s new reality,” said Mike Denning, vice president, global security for Verizon Enterprise Solutions.

“We understand that companies need to have the mindset that being breached is a matter of when, not if. With our combined capabilities, we are preparing enterprises to better withstand a cyberattack before and beyond the breach.”

Ed Powers, national managing principal, Deloitte cyber risk services, Deloitte said companies today are looking for more comprehensive cybersecurity tools rather than acquiring them in bits and pieces.

“Organizations today need to quickly contain the damage, but they also need a solutions provider that can help them regain full business strength and improve their capacity to withstand future crises. We are making it possible for our clients to meet tomorrow’s cyber challenges head-on while continuing to power performance in their businesses,” Powers said.

The move comes as cyberattacks like DDoS are becoming more frequent and more impactful. According to a recently published Neustar DDoS report which surveyed 250 businesses across a broad range of sectors globally, about 40 per cent of companies now estimate losses of over £100,000 per hour at peak times during a DDoS outage.

American Civil Liberties Union, Booz Allen Hamilton, Google, Government, Guest Post, Legal, National Security Agency, NSA, Patriot Act, The Vast Machine, Verizon, White House

The Future of Tech Companies, the NSA, and Your Information

Guest Post by Lewis Jacobs

Verizon and the NSA

Last week, the technology world was turned upside down when the Guardian broke the news that the National Security Agency had directed telecommunications company Verizon to release customer call records and metadata on an “ongoing daily basis.”

Though the metadata doesn’t include the audio content of calls, it does include the phone numbers on both ends of calls, the devices and location of both parties involved, and the time and duration of calls.

The order was leaked by Edward Snowden, an analyst for defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton at the NSA. The order targets both international and domestic calls, and it does not contain parameters for who can see the data or whether or not the data will be destroyed after NSA use.

Though the White House and the NSA say that the data will only be used for counter-terrorism efforts and other national security measures, the order nonetheless gives the federal government access to data from all of Verizon’s more than 100 million customers.

Since the story broke, there has been significant debate over whether the NSA is working within the regulations of the First and Fourth Amendments or whether it is violating citizens’ rights to free speech and privacy. The White House has defended the order as a necessary measure for national security. But critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union and several U.S. lawmakers, disagree.

What it means for the future

The controversy raises the question of whether or not other technology and telecommunications companies will be required to follow suit—or whether they already have. Amy Davidson at the New Yorker speculates that the leaked Verizon order is “simply one of a type—the one that fell off the truck.” Adam Banner at the Huffington Post wonders, “How many other ‘top secret’ court orders are currently in action with countless other information providers?”

The NSA is said to have been monitoring and collecting customer data from some of the world’s largest technology companies with the help of surveillance program PRISM. But many companies, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, and AOL, have denied providing the government direct access to their users’ information. Google, one of the companies to deny any knowledge of PRISM, wrote an open letter to the Attorney General and the FBI requesting to make public any federal requests for data.

In any case, it’s unlikely that the NSA demanded customer information only from Verizon, meaning that the federal government could be (and probably is) accessing information about citizens through their phone providers, their email services, and their search engines. Faced with federal orders, there’s not much that technology companies can do in opposition.

The future of NSA technology surveillance will depend, of course, on its legality, which is yet to be determined. It’s unclear whether or not the NSA’s actions fall under the provisions of the Patriot Act, the FISA Amendments Act, the Constitution, and federal government’s system of checks and balances.

The American Civil Liberties Union recently announced their plan to sue the White House Administration for violating the privacy rights of Americans. On the other side, whistleblower Edward Snowden is currently under investigation for the disclosure of classified information, an offense that could result in life in prison.

This article was submitted by Lewis Jacobs, an avid blogger and tech enthusiast. He enjoys fixing computers and writing about internet trends. Currently he is writing about an internet in my area campaign for local internet providers.

Sources:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2013/06/the-nsa-verizon-scandal.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-banner/the-nsa-and-verizon

http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/11/technology/security/google-government-data/

http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/07/technology/security/nsa-data-prism/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/06/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-nsa-scandal/