Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (00:06):
In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, ensuring the safety and reliability of the network is paramount. Joining me to talk about this topic and more is Scott Calzia, vice President of Marketing at HPE Aruba Networking. Scott, thank you for being with us today.

Scott Calzia, HPE Aruba Networking Marketing (00:23):
Thank you, Clarence. Pleasure to be here.

Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (00:24):
So what are some of the biggest secure connectivity challenges facing telcos and their partners today?

Scott Calzia, HPE Aruba Networking Marketing (00:30):
Well, you'd probably be surprised of hearing me say this, but innovation, innovation is really one of the things that can have an impact on the security parameters of any type of organization. As we look around the event, there's a lot of talk around ai. That's one of the biggest innovations we've had in many decades of the industry. Now with ai. In order for it to work properly requires a lot of data, and of course, customers are very concerned about protecting that data. So what we've seen is really a resurgence of the network as part of ai, because the network is really responsible for collecting, securing, transporting, and delivering that data. Now, what we've done within HP Ribbon Network for many years is security is really paramount. It's integrated. It's part of the networking piece. So we are really focused on that. Now. One of the things we've looked at is that security itself is a patchwork.

(01:32)
Over the years, there's been a lot of security implementations, different vendors, different ways of securing different parts of the network. So that has become a challenge. What we're focused on is integrating that security within the network itself and making it really part of the network. Kind of a third thing that's a challenge for customers and for the telcos is a skillset. Over time, we've seen the maturity of it staffs. We're starting to see that some of the IT positions are going unfilled. The skills are not there. So one of the challenges that all customers and telcos in particular face is ensuring that there is some automation that goes with security because that skillset is kind of declining. As we see by 2030, we're going to start to see that about one third of the open positions will go unfilled.

Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (02:21):
So how does having a security first AI powered network help telcos really serve their customers

Scott Calzia, HPE Aruba Networking Marketing (02:28):
Well, so there's four things that they really have to consider. One is visibility of that. They're getting security information from a lot of different sources. So part of what h HP Aruba Networking does is we collect telemetry information, security telemetry information from not only the networking devices, but also the devices or the end user devices that are connected to the wired infrastructure, the wireless infrastructure, the wide area infrastructure, the users that are using them. And so we have a single source of truth coming from all of those different users and all those different devices. Now, with that, we can define a single global security policy, and from there we can enforce that security policy across what we call the edge to cloud. So it doesn't matter whether that security policy has to be enforced for users that are connecting to the wireless infrastructure or if they're connecting into the wired, or if it's data that is flowing through the data center network. That's all part of the same policy. Now, with that, in order to be very efficient and to reduce the amount of time, you have to have some type of automation that goes with that. So that's where kind of, again, coming full circle AI comes back into play. With that, those advanced techniques, we can actually recognize various types of security breaches or be proactive about those and protect the network and the infrastructure as well as the users and devices from those in advance.

Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (03:50):
So what are some of the innovations that Aruba is showcasing here at MWC?

Scott Calzia, HPE Aruba Networking Marketing (03:54):
We have many different things you can see over in our booth that there's a lot of things going on, but a few of the things that we are showcasing. So one, a product we call Client Insights, that is part of our central services platform. Client insights has the ability to device profile. So it's actually looking at the devices that are connecting into the network and it's being able to make a determination on what kind of device that is. Is it an iPhone device or a smartphone? Is it a tablet? Is it an iot device? What kind of iot devices? Is it a camera? It's important that we recognize and accurately determine what those devices are because that's where a lot of the security breaches start is from IOT devices. Something that is pretending to be something other than it is Client Insights can actually predict or actually understand that device to 99% accuracy.

(04:46)
Now, with that, we have other products as well. So SD WAN is one of the products that we have. It's called our h hp Aruba Networking Edge Connect platform. It actually is enabling the ability for users to connect remotely or to remote sites. It eliminates branch routers in remote locations, et cetera. With that, we have tied in what we call Secure Access, secure Edge, or SSE, as the industry calls it. One of the new things, at least since last May, may of 2023 when we acquired Access Security, we've now implemented SSE into our portfolio as well. So we'd have a full blown SASS or secure Access, secure Edge solution. Also, as part of, I mentioned Central before as part of Client Insights, but Central itself a services platform. That's where we're actually collecting a lot of the network telemetry. We're collecting information on the users and the devices. So customers can look at that. They have the visibility, or even I could venture to say, observability of security within that environment. Plus a lot of the AI capabilities are built directly in the central platform.

Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (05:55):
How should a telco go about using a Zero trust architecture to help keep their customers secure?

Scott Calzia, HPE Aruba Networking Marketing (06:03):
So we didn't talk much about Zero Trust, but zero trust is really a paradigm. That is kind of the goal that all security teams are striving for, ensuring that any users or devices will allow them to connect, but we're not going to trust them initially. They actually have to log in with the right credentials. IOT devices. That's what the client insights becomes important. Again, because they may not have the credentials to log in, you've got to understand the type of device that it is. Is it following the right parameters? Zero trust is a paradigm. It's not a product, and it has to be continually looked at, updated and modeled. So what telcos and customers should do, they have to make sure that they are implementing, that they're implemented across all parts of their infrastructure, whether it be the campus, whether it be the branch, whether it be the data center environment, and they have to make sure that they're working with or they have to make sure that the networking and the security people are working closely together to ensure that they're coupling that so that we're maintaining connectivity for the best user experience. But we're following that paradigm of zero trust and ensuring that we're not trusting until verify.

Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (07:07):
Scott, it's great information. Thank you for being with me today.

Scott Calzia, HPE Aruba Networking Marketing (07:09):
Thank you, Clarence. I've enjoyed it. Take care.