This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Todd Kiehn, SVP Global Product Management, GTT
When the world hit pause during the pandemic, home offices, remote work, and the adoption of cloud-based business applications created new avenues of attack for cybercriminals. Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, malware, ransomware, and other criminal and disruptive activity surged … [visit site to read more]
With a global recession looming, this week has seen employees of Chinese vendor giant Huawei issued a stark warning from the company’s founder and chairman, Ren Zhengfei.
In a leaked memo delivered to all the company’s 195,000 staff members, Ren was gloomy about the future of the global economy, telling employees that there was a “very painful” decade ahead, citing the long-term effects of the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and US sanctions on Huawei.
“Huawei must reduce any overly optimistic expectations for the future and until 2023 or even 2025,” he said in the memo. “We must make survival the most important guideline, and not only to survive but survive with quality”.
Ren said that the company must adapt to these new conditions by refocussing on cash flow and profit, rather than simply growing sales revenue.
“Take surviving as the main program, shrink and close all marginal businesses, and pass the chill to everyone,” Ren said. “The entire company’s business policy should shift from the pursuit of scale to the pursuit of profit and cash flow.”
As part of this process, Ren indicated that the company could seek to downsize in overseas markets and reduce spending on R&D in areas not delivering immediate profit, such as electric vehicles.
In fact, Huawei has already begun streamlining its workforce, having already cut roughly 2,000 jobs in 2021, largely due to US sanctions shrinking the company’s annual revenue by over a third. Now, sources are suggesting that the company is preparing to cut 4,000–5,000 additional middle manager jobs.
It appears to be no coincidence that Ren’s memo should come shortly after the Huawei’s H1 financial results, which were quietly announced earlier this month. While the company’s decline in revenues had slowed since Q1, the company still reported their overall revenues as down 5.9% year-on-year, reaching roughly $44.7 billion.
This ongoing slump in revenue is largely attributed to the continued decline of Huawei’s handset business – the business unit worst hit by US sanctions – where sales shrunk by around a quarter compared to 2021.
However, the revenue reduction was also offset somewhat by the company’s carrier and enterprise software units, which continue to grow at a healthy pace.
“While our device business was heavily impacted, our ICT infrastructure business maintained steady growth,” said Ken Hu, Huawei’s rotating chairman at the results announcement. “Moving forward, we will harness trends in digitalization and decarbonization to keep creating value for our customers and partners, and secure quality development.”
“Our strategy for operations in 2022 revolves around surviving and doing so sustainably,” Hu noted.
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Wholesale connectivity provider, Netomnia, has announced further growth plans for its full fibre network in Avon and North Wales.
In a series of news releases the company, who builds infrastructure to enable ISP’s to provide their broadband services, has revealed an initial investment of £47.7 million in Bristol and up to £12 million in Wrexam and the surrounding area.
In Bristol Netomnia is targeting 159,000 premises starting in the suburb of Downend before extending into the communities of Kingswood and Filton, whilst in Wrexam 40,000 premises are targeted via a partnership with GForce.
Wrexham, which will receive city status on 1st September 2022 as part of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, is Netomnia’s third location in Wales, following on from 29,000 premises in Barry and 55,000 premises in Bridgend.
CEO, Jeremy Chelot, said “Marking our third location in Wales, we know that our network will provide real benefits to the area for generations to come and we look forward to continuing our expansion across the UK.”
The group, YouFibre and Netomnia, have secured £418 million in funding since 2020. The majority – £295 million – has been raised via a funding round led by DigitalBridge Investment Management (DigitalBridge). Earlier this year, DigitalBridge principal Manjari Govada said of “We have been highly impressed with the growth of the business and the best-in-class team he [Jeremy Chelot] has assembled.”
Jeremy Chelot will join a panel discussion on building future-ready 5G and advanced FTTH networks in the UK at Connected Britain on the 20 September. To secure your seat visit the website totaltele.com/connectedbritain
One M&A, one expansion, one new tenant, and one vendor win: … [visit site to read more]
Acronis, a global leader in cyber protection, unveiled its mid-year cyberthreats report, conducted by Acronis’ Cyber Protection Operation Centers, to provide an in-depth review of the cyberthreat trends the company’s experts are tracking. The report details how ransomware continues to be the number one threat to large and medium-sized businesses, including government organisations, and underlines how over-complexity in IT and infrastructure leads to increased attacks. Nearly half of all reported breaches during the first half of 2022 involved stolen credentials, which enable phishing and ransomware campaigns. Findings underscore the need for more holistic approaches to cybersecurity.
To extract credentials and other sensitive information, cybercriminals use phishing and malicious emails as their preferred infection vectors. Nearly one percent of all emails contain malicious links or files, and more than one-quarter (26.5%) of all emails were delivered to the user’s inbox (not blocked by Microsoft365) and then were removed by Acronis email security.
Moreover, the research reveals how cybercriminals also use malware and target unpatched software vulnerabilities to extract data and hold organisations hostage. Further complicating the cybersecurity threat landscape is the proliferation of attacks on non-traditional entry avenues. Attackers have made cryptocurrencies and decentralised finance systems a priority of late. Successful breaches using these various routes have resulted in the loss of billions of dollars and terabytes of exposed data.
These attacks are able to be launched due to overcomplexity in IT, a common problem throughout businesses as many tech leaders assume more vendors and programs lead to improved security when the inverse is actually true. Increased complexity exposes more surface area and gaps to potential attackers, keeping organisations vulnerable to potentially devastating damage.
“Today’s cyberthreats are constantly evolving and evading traditional security measures,” said Candid Wüest, Acronis VP of Cyber Protection Research. “Organisations of all sizes need a holistic approach to cybersecurity that integrates everything from anti-malware to email-security and vulnerability-assessment capabilities. Cybercriminals are becoming too sophisticated and the results of attacks too dire to leave it to single-layered approaches and point solutions.”
Critical data points reveal complex threat landscape
As reliance on the cloud increases, attackers have homed in on different entryways to cloud-based networks. Cybercriminals increased their focus on Linux operating systems and managed service providers (MSPs) and their network of SMB customers. The threat landscape is shifting, and companies must keep pace.
Ransomware is worsening, even more so than we predicted.
The use of phishing, malicious emails and websites, and malware continues to grow.
More cybercriminals are focusing on cryptocurrencies and decentralised finance (DeFi) platforms. By exploiting flaws in smart contracts or stealing recovery phrases and passwords with malware or phishing attempts, hackers have wormed their way into crypto wallets and exchanges alike.
Unpatched vulnerabilities of exposed services is another common infection vector—just ask Kaseya. To that end, companies like Microsoft, Google, and Adobe have emphasised software patches and transparency around publicly submitted vulnerabilities. These patches likely helped stem the tide of 79 new exploits each month. Unpatched vulnerabilities also tie into how overcomplexity is hurting businesses more than helping, as all of these vulnerabilities serve as additional potential points of failure.
Breaches leave financial, SLA distress in their wake
Cybercriminals often demand ransoms or outright steal funds from their targets. But companies do not suffer challenges only to their bottom lines. Attacks often cause downtime and other service-level breaches, impacting a company’s reputation and customer experience.
The current cybersecurity threat landscape requires a multi-layered solution that combines anti-malware, EDR, DLP, email security, vulnerability assessment, patch management, RMM, and backup capabilities all in one place. The integration of these various components gives companies a better chance of avoiding cyberattacks, mitigating the damage of successful attacks, and retaining data that might have been altered or stolen in the process.
You can download a copy of the full Acronis Mid-Year Cyberthreats Report 2022 here.
State-owned Indian operator Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) is apparently planning to sell 10,000 of its 68,000 towers with an estimated value of 4,000 crore (about US$501 million).
The sale will help it to meet targets laid out as part of what is called its national monetisation pipeline (NMP). KPMG is expected to have a role as financial advisor ahead of the sale.
BSNL provides telecom services in every part of the country except Mumbai and Delhi where another state-run company, Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL), operates.
According to India’s Economic Times, BSNL is only selling towers that have co-location arrangements with third party telecom service providers such as Reliance Jio and Airtel. Nearly 70% of BSNL’s towers are fiberised and ready for deployment for 4G and 5G services, making them appealing to potential buyers.
Although it has not been specifically stated, tower infrastructure sharing or leaseback would be the likeliest way for BSNL to continue offering services without having to manage so much passive infrastructure. In any case, as part of NMP targets, BSNL has to sell 13,567 towers by financial year 2025 and MTNL has to sell 1,350 towers.
The context for this activity is an attempt to revive the fortunes of the loss-making BSNL. This includes a recent massive infusion of government money into BSNL and a planned merger of BSNL with special purpose vehicle Bharat Broadband Network to boost rural connectivity and increase broadband penetration.
However, most of the money given to BSNL appears to be directed at 4G service provision. The government has insisted that BSNL uses made in India 4G and 5G, which potentially puts it at a disadvantage compared to major private operators. As does the 4G timescale: a pan-India 4G rollout by BSNL is still at least 18 months away.
Over the past decade we have seen a major shift in the ecosystem of global internet exchanges from the massively centralized to the globally decentralized. This week plans were announced for another IX, this time in Nigeria via a partnership between AMS-IX and MDXi. … [visit site to read more]
The long-awaited launch of services by Ethiopia’s new mobile operator Safaricom Ethiopia is due to take place this month. Meanwhile, state-owned incumbent operator Ethio Telecom is continuing to upgrade its offering. The latest improvement involves a new fraud management system to replace the operator’s legacy system.
In this case it’s Indian company Subex, which describes itself as a pioneer in driving AI-led digital trust, that has been selected by Ethio Telecom to deploy a fraud management solution built on Subex’s AI orchestration platform, HyperSense.
This new solution will replace Ethio Telecom’s existing legacy fraud management system, enabling the company, Subex says, to move from a traditional rules-based approach to an AI-first approach. This approach will, in turn, enable the operator to detect new and unknown threats in real time.
The Subex system, which leverages AI in every step of the fraud management process, will allow Ethio Telecom to bring in enhanced accuracy, coverage and time-to-detect. These capabilities will, in turn, enable the operator to adopt a proactive approach to combatting risks such as SIM box, spoofing, SMS frauds, roaming frauds, subscription frauds, device frauds, mobile money risk and credit risk management. Ethio Telecom has already deployed a business assurance system from Subex, so will now be able to consolidate its revenue assurance and fraud management approach to ensure the breaking down of silos and enhance operational efficiency.
With Subex’s fraud management solution on HyperSense, Ethio Telecom will be able to improve fraud coverage across its various business lines, leverage explainable AI capabilities to enhance customer experience, and make quick, data-driven decisions with advanced visualization and dashboarding capabilities. It will also be able to cater to new business requirements thanks to the system’s scalability and elasticity, and benefit from rolling upgrades – meaning it will eliminate long and expensive upgrade cycles. Finally, says Subex, it can reduce TCO with open-source components and a low hardware footprint.
Today, Dark Fibre player Neos Networks has announced a new partnership with Giganet, aiming to support the ISP’s burgeoning FTTP rollout with backhaul and data centre services.
Giganet currently offers customers access to its gigabit services through a variety of network providers, including Openreach and CityFibre, reaching millions of homes across the UK. In fact, earlier this year, Giganet announced that they had extended their partnership with CityFibre, thereby making their services available to customers across the entirety of CityFibre’s UK network.
However, last year Giganet announced they would also be rolling out their own FTTP network directly, investing £250 million to cover underserved areas of Hampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire, and West Sussex.
In total, the company hopes to reach 300,000 premises with full fibre over the next four years, with its core network and first four exchange rings set to be live by the end of 2022.
As this new network grows, it will need additional backhaul capacity and support – something that Neos, with its 550 unbundled exchange network, is well positioned to provide.
“Neos Networks rose to the challenge of providing us with resilient and high capacity backhaul circuits across a wide range of exchanges as well as our core data centres,” explained Matthew Skipsey, Chief Technology Officer at Giganet. “Using Neos Networks, we have been able to secure connectivity to our points of presence faster than expected, initially enabling each of our first four regional rings with resilient 100Gb/s backhaul. This means our south coast roll-out is progressing at pace.”
This network expansion project will see Neos support Giganet to deliver a more than tenfold capacity increase.
“Both Neos Networks and Giganet have adopted a collaborative approach to this relationship. This has resulted not only in solutions being delivered faster than ever, as the Giganet network grows, it also gives us the ability to transition connectivity between points of presence without any disruption,” explained Sarah Mills, Chief Revenue Officer at Neos Networks. “There is no doubt that by working in partnership with alternative network providers, like Giganet, UK residents will benefit from a better, faster, and more resilient connectivity.”
Giganet’s Matthew Skipsey will be speaking on a panel focussing on enabling the creation of smart places at this year’s live Connected Britain conference. Check out the rest of the agenda here and join us live on September 20–21
Also in the news:
Singtel mulling the sale of cybersecurity firm Trustwave
CityFibre undergoes colourful rebrand
Vodafone offloads Hungarian unit for €1.8bn
