Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (00:01):
I'm Clarence Reynolds and AI has become ubiquitous in the telecom industry, but now because of it, it no longer can be an add-on to network security. It has to be built directly into the fabric. David Hughes from HPE Networking joins us to explain what built-in security looks like in an AI-driven telco world. David, thanks for being with us

David Hughes, HPE (00:24):
Today. Hey, great to be here.

Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (00:26):
So AI is transforming service provider infrastructure. What does that fundamental shift mean for network security?

David Hughes, HPE (00:33):
It's a great question. As you know, AI is changing everything. And so the value of data is increasing. People want to have more telemetry, so they're collecting more data. All of that, those feeds need to be secured. They're bringing it to central sites to do training. We've got to make sure that that training infrastructure is secured. And then those results are being distributed out to the edge for inference. And again, that edge infrastructure has to be secured. And so we're really shifting from a point where the network connects anything to anything and then you try to block bad guys to where security needs to be built in. It needs to be intrinsic in the network so that we're thinking about security first as we deploy

Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (01:16):
It. So here at MWC, HPE has unveiled an integrated telco portfolio. How is that a game changer for service providers?

David Hughes, HPE (01:24):
Well, yeah, we're bringing together the Juniper Networks technology with HP Aruba networking technology to provide a really comprehensive portfolio all the way from edge to cloud. And for telco providers, we're providing a full suite of solutions. And part of that is that we have security built in across that portfolio. All the way from how we develop our software, how we build and manufacture through to the security features themselves around encryption and zero trust. We're making sure that our solutions have security as a fundamental principle built in rather than bolted on.

Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (02:02):
And service providers want to monetize their edge and AI capabilities. How does security play into that opportunity and what is HPE doing to help?

David Hughes, HPE (02:11):
Yeah. So when it comes to monetization, there's really two things with respect to security. First is telcos have an opportunity to be able to monetize offers from our security portfolio. An instance would be our SASE or Secure Access Service Edge portfolio, which they can use to offer security capabilities, secure access to their customers. But perhaps more fundamentally, when you want to monetize anything, you have to have the trust of the end customer, of the consumer. And so making sure that your infrastructure is as secure as possible, that you're as immune as possible too from threats is really important in terms of building that trust on which monetization relies.

Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (02:54):
And as adoption is starting to accelerate, what will define the next phase of security for service providers?

David Hughes, HPE (03:01):
Yeah. When you think and look out ahead, obviously we talked about the way AI is changing everything. One of the things we're doing is using AI internally, thinking about how do we use AI to improve our security. So how do we use Agentech to be able to react to things more quickly? How do we use AI to be able to model behavior and detect anomalies? Those are important factors. I think in general as well, what we're seeing is the need to help the security teams and network teams work well together with shared visibility, being able to have global policy that's automatically implemented across the entire portfolio. Those are all important factors that we see coming to the fore as we move forwards.

Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (03:46):
David, thank you so much for those insights.

David Hughes, HPE (03:48):
Thank you.