7 Layers

Industry trade group GSMA stated that more than 88,000 people attended its recent MWC Barcelona 2023 event, a number that might be hard to verify but seems legitimate considering the masses of people spread throughout the multiple halls of Barcelona’s cavernous Gran Via. While attendance might not have matched the 109,000 people GSMA said had attended the last pre-Covid event in 2019, many in attendance were still amazed by the strong turnout for the mobile telecommunication industry’s largest annual event. On this week’s SDxCentral 7 Layers podcast, I am joined by Reporter Julia King to take a look back at the MWC Barcelona 2023 event, highlighting some of the bigger news and trends to emerge from the show. This includes: • The network API push highlighted by GSMA’s Open Gateway initiative that has so far attracted nearly two-dozen operators and vendors attempting to squeeze more revenue from 5G networks. • The differing dynamics between vendor heavyweights Ericsson, Huawei, and Nokia. Ericsson’s event splash was somewhat subdued due to ongoing operational challenges; Huawei looked to counter ongoing geopolitical struggles with sheer mass; and Nokia deconstructed its logo to emphasis its operating momentum. • There was considerable open radio access network (RAN) news from the event, especially from European-based operators that have been aggressively trialing different open RAN solutions and have staked out deployment benchmarks. • And what would a telecom focused event be without looking toward the future. In this case, it was expected benefits from soon-to-be-available 5G-Advanced specifications and further-down-the-road 6G technology. We are still at least a year away from the former, and at least five years away from the latter, but what fun is a trade show if you can’t dream a little. We hope you enjoy this audio look back at the MWC Barcelona 2023 event, and make sure to check out all of our coverage of the show on our dedicated event page. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The open radio access network (RAN) market recently gained significant U.S. government support when Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel touted open RAN as a way for operators to circumvent network equipment from China-based vendors like Huawei and ZTE. Specifically, Rosenworcel noted the ability for open RAN technology to provide operators with greater access to more secure networking equipment. “In the long run, these systems can help diversify the technology in our networks and grow the market for more secure 5G equipment,” she stated during a speech at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event earlier this year. The U.S. has earmarked billions of dollars to be used to help rip-and-replace existing network infrastructure from China-based vendors, including RAN equipment. The FCC had previously reported America’s wireless network infrastructure included at least 24,000 pieces of Huawei or ZTE equipment spanning about 8,400 locations. Most of this work toward open RAN has been under the guidance of the O-RAN Alliance, which is an industry trade group working on technical specifications that foster greater adoption of open RAN equipment. However, that organization has been questioned for its inclusion of some members linked to organizations included on the U.S. Entity List that tracks organizations and individuals considered to support “activities contrary to U.S. national security and/or foreign policy interests.” This issue at one point resulted in Nokia pausing activities with the O-RAN Alliance over concerns about Chinese members’ blacklisted status with the U.S. government. The O-RAN Alliance quickly adopted changes to its participation documents and procedures that brought Nokia back into the fold. John Strand, CEO of Strand Consult, stated that this connection should raise concerns over the security structure of open RAN equipment. “What I dislike is that open RAN has been marketed as an alternative to Chinese infrastructure,” Strand said. “Open RAN is just as Chinese as anything else. There’s 11 or 12 working committees in [O-RAN Alliance] and China Mobile is either the chair or the vice-chair of nine or 10 of them. China Mobile and 43 other Chinese companies on the U.S. Entity List are key stake holders in [O-RAN Alliance]. … That’s an issue.” On this episode of the SDxCentral 7 Layers podcast, Strand provides more insight into those potential concerns and areas where other security challenges could impact the adoption of open RAN architectures. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of the 7 Layers podcast, TJ Gonen, VP of Cloud Security at Check Point sat down with SDxCentral Editor Nancy Liu to delve into the ever-changing world of cloud security – specifically emerging trends in the evolution of the cloud threat landscape. Furthermore, we will explore how advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies, such as ChatGPT, are being utilized to enhance cloud security, and discuss the most promising AI and ML-based cloud security solutions. Check Point Research recently reported a 48% year-over-year increase in cloud-based cyberattacks for 2022, as organizations increasingly move operations to the cloud. “There are just way more cloud assets, so it's very natural for more attacks to happen on such a large estate,” Gonen told SDxCentral. “Another thing that's happening more and more, it's already a reality … is that more critical assets are moving to the cloud.” “That speed of change and scale of cloud is the number one reason for this increase in cybersecurity attacks,” he added. “So, operationalizing cloud security at speed and scale and keeping up is going to continue to be the biggest challenge.” AI and ML technologies can help address this issue as “[what] they are actually very good at is to move fast, is to automate stuff.” The Check Point Research team recently published several studies into OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Codex. “[What] Codex and ChatGPT show to all of us is what AI can do now,” Gonen said. “It just showed what impact it can have on almost everything we do in life, not just the technology nerds.” He noted Check Point has been using AI across the board for four years. “When you connect the security solution, you might find yourself with thousands of alerts, and sometimes thousands of alerts is a bigger problem than no alerts,” Gonen said. “One of the ways that we're using, for example, machine learning and AI, is to take these alerts and instead of just throwing them at the user, we actually use machine learning and AI to prioritize and talk about or focus only on the risks that matter. ” He also expects AI and ML technologies to replace some of the security layers that today are driven by humans. “For example, I think that we are maybe a year away from replacing, what's called in the security world, the tier-one analyst — the people who take alerts from a bunch of places and sit in a SOC and try to correlate them to understand what happens on the first tier.” “That's perfect because you can focus more on the higher-skilled individuals,” Gonen added. Listen to the full interview now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chip Childers has been at VMware for six months, during which time he has focused on steering the vendor’s use and interaction of open source software platforms and refining its approach to supporting those efforts. These are significant areas of interest for VMware and for Childers’ role as VP and chief open source officer at the vendor, which is increasingly interacting with the open source community. “For projects that VMware hosts, we want to make sure that we're very welcoming to participants that want to collaborate with us, but also how do we engage in a really authentic way with open source communities that are out there, maybe at a foundation or owned by another vendor or just even a collective of individuals,” Childers said. “So we spent a lot of time on making sure that VMware has a very thoughtful community strategy and how it engages with these projects.” Those comments build on what Childers said were his initial areas of focus when he took on the role last year. At that time, Childers repeatedly mentioned a need for VMware to be “intentional” with its interactions across the open source community. This work also includes VMware exploring other open source opportunities that it can help foster and in turn help power new VMware services. “We're exploring project communities, we're trying to make a very positive impact in those communities and, frankly, get to the point where those communities are generating software that we think is going to be useful for VMware, either internally or as part of our product strategy,” Childers added. This includes a specific focus on operationalizing machine learning (ML). Childers mentioned projects like Kubeflow, which supports ML stacks running on Kubernetes. Kubeflow is currently under the guise of Google, but is working toward inclusion in the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). Childers also touched on the growing need for VMware to work on securing open source ML platforms. He described attack models that can add noise to an image in a way that can trick an ML model into thinking “a banana is an apple.” To counter this, VMware is looking at different projects, with Childers citing the Adversarial Robustness Toolbox project that is currently on GitHub as a potential way to test various threats or attack vectors. “As we look at it we see how important these operational attributes of machine learning are going to be to our customers and, frankly, to the industry writ large,” he added. Listen to more of Childers’ insight into VMware’s areas of focus in the latest episode of the SDxCentral 7 Layers podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The 5G Open Innovation Lab is looking to help telecommunication operators and enterprises tap into the rapidly growing cloud and software developer ecosystem they know they need to tap into to reach their digital transformation goals. Jim Brisimitizis, general partner at 5G Open Innovation Lab, explained that these efforts involve his organization acting as a central contact point between these industry segments, a task lightened by the group’s list of big-name segment players. The 5G Open Innovation Lab was established in early 2020, and included founding partners Intel, NASA, and T-Mobile US. That group selected 17 start-up companies as initial members of its 12-week program that allowed them to tap into industry and financial resources to help them design and develop 5G and edge applications targeted at enterprise digital transformation goals. Brisimitizis noted this work is most transformational for communication service provider (CSPs) that could be most challenged by this cloud evolution. “The lab was really born from the standpoint of exposing the CSP markets to a very vibrant and always moving software development ecosystem, i.e. startups. Expose them to a network of fairly large global platforms like Microsoft, and VMware, and Dell, and Intel, and Amdocs, and others, and then also exposing them to a set of enterprises who are on these digital transforming journeys,” Brisimitzis said. “And by exposing them they see both the opportunity, they see both how their networks could potentially integrate into the fabric of IT platforms from around the world, i.e. the partners that we have, and then they would see that demand from the enterprises too.” The group’s timing also aligns with the broader industry trend of migrating network resources to a cloud environment using cloud-native principles like containers that can better serve 5G-based edge use cases. “The timing is coming more in line with the opportunity than it was in the past,” Brisimitzis said. “In the past, where it was simply co-hosting or colocating of server infrastructure, power, cooling, and connectivity, is now surpassed to a function of, hey, software development is going in one direction, the cloud’s already a foregone conclusion, it's here to stay, the edges is going to be real. There's a whole slew of use cases that are going to require more and more proximity computing, i.e. edge, and the carriers have two really important ingredients in that mix. They have real-estate locations and they have spectrum.” Listen to more of Brisimitzis’ insight into this 5G and edge opportunity for telecom operators and vendors in the latest episode of the SDxCentral 7 Layers podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dell Technologies’ Dennis Hoffman has spent the past three years refining his company’s growing focus on the 5G telecommunications space. A refinement that has been bolstered by the growing adoption of open and cloud-native architectures that Dell Technologies has been infusing throughout its broader ecosystem. “We've been focused almost exclusively from the beginning on helping people embrace open network architectures and monetizing them,” Hoffman said in an interview with SDxCentral. Hoffman, who is SVP and GM for Dell Technologies’ Telco Systems business, explained that this was an important challenge for the telecommunications space that has historically been averse to big technology swings. “If it's your job to run a network that can never go down – and only got more important during the pandemic – you have to be careful about the ways you do it,” Hoffman said. “It's an opportunity, though, for a company like Dell as cloud native, and industry standard, and all the stuff – all the the buzzwords that dominate it – start to get utilized in the design of telecommunications networks, it creates a massive opportunity for somebody like us.” Dell Technologies has slowly been chopping away at these opportunities, using its legacy knowledge in data centers and servers to help operators construct and run open systems to power their 5G core and edge networks. This has allowed the vendor to gain traction in both brownfield network deployments and greenfield operators like Dish Network. “There's this move from closed architectures and legacy technologies to all the new software defined, cloud-native industry standard stuff, [and it’s] well and good, but if it's all delivered by a group of vendors that you can't count on to be around in five years, it's very hard for them to adopt,” Hoffman said. “One of the pieces of feedback we get all the time is our scale, our global reach, and our financial stability are really important decisions for them as they kind of figure out how they move from where they are today to where they want to be and more fully embrace digital transformation.” Looking ahead, Hoffman said one area of focus will be on the growing push toward the network edge, which is a space telecom operators should be ideally positioned in to gain significant market presence. “All that edge real estate owned by the world's telecoms is really priceless real estate, frankly,” Hoffman said. “We felt like it was very much aligned with what we're trying to do to help enable edge computing. And it's not going to be easy for us to do that ff we don't have much deeper, stronger, more powerful relationships with the world's network operators. For those reasons we kind of entered the space and found pretty quick that the focus areas that needed help. We're taking open technologies and pulling them together into systems that telcos can rely on.” Listen to more of Hoffman’s insight into the market, the challenging vendor dynamics, and where operators are focused moving forward in the latest episode of the SDxCentral 7 Layers podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fortinet’s FortiGuard Labs recently released its predictions for 2023, highlighting the trend of advanced persistent cybercrime enabling a new wave of destructive attacks at scale, fuelled by cybercrime as a service. In this episode of the 7 Layers, Derek Manky, chief security strategist and VP of global threat intelligence at FortiGuard Labs, sat down with SDxCentral editor Nancy Liu to discuss security trends. Manky and the team at the labs have seen cyberattacks become more destructive in nature this year, as well as the emergence of reconnaissance-as-a-service. Ransom-as-a-service in particular involves more destructive attacks, “so it’s becoming more bold,” he said, adding that “reconnaissance-as-a-service … we have not really seen this yet, but it’s something I expect to see in 2023.” The labs also saw cybercrime converging with advanced persistent threat methods in 2022. Manky explained that advanced persistent cybercrime combines advanced persistent threat (APT), which has traditionally been used by nation-states to target critical infrastructure, with cybercrime that is financially motivated. “We’re seeing a PTS of nation-state groups now teaming up with cybercriminal groups,” Manky said. “So In the private sector, I see them now worried about APT they were not before because APT groups teaming up with cybercrime groups, those destructive targeted threats are now hitting the private sector. It’s the same thing on the public sector side. They typically have only been worried about APT, but now they are also expanding their focus to cybercrime because it’s shared infrastructure and those groups are working together and the attacks are becoming highly targeted.” “So in the private sector, I see them now worried about APT that they weren’t before because APT groups are teaming up with cybercriminal groups, these destructive targeted threats are now hitting the private sector. It’s the same on the public sector side. They used to just worry about APT, but now they’re widening their focus to cybercrime because it’s a shared infrastructure and these groups are working together and the attacks are becoming very targeted”. Advanced persistent cybercrime “is our single biggest threat to expect in 2023 and beyond,” he added. To mitigate these threats, Manky is encouraging organizations to use solutions and principles such as artificial intelligence, security-as-a-service, secure access service edge (SASE), zero trust, and zero-trust networks access (ZTNA). “Cybercriminals are using artificial intelligence, so we need to on the defensive side do that to cybersecurity teams, so leveraging automation, orchestration, AI power, and security operations is a big effective measure that can go a long way without having to hire headcount and increase your opex,” he said. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The radio access network (RAN) is central to a wireless network deployment. It’s the physical pieces of equipment we all see out in the wild, sometimes standing proudly and showing off its various antennas, sometimes being shy and trying to hide as a pine tree. But as these RAN networks continue to evolve based on the latest 5G standards, they are being pruned by virtualized (vRAN) and open RAN platforms designed to provide easier management and control. The next step in this process is the use of a RAN intelligent controller (RIC) to provide operators with a way to manage these vRAN and open RAN systems on a per-bit and per-sector basis. The RIC operates in the middle of a RAN deployment as a kind of linkage to the wider network. It allows operators to deploy xApps and rApps that then allow operators to design and control RAN functions, providing administrative RAN sovereignty over functions that are typically implemented as proprietary features on base stations. These “apps” are microservices-based applications operating in near-real time (xApps) and non-real time (rApps) that provide an operator with more control over their open RAN environments. RIC development has steadily gained attention from vendors looking to help operators manage their growing RAN infrastructure. VMware, for instance, recently added Viavi Solutions to its RIC ecosystem, bringing standardized framework and metric testing to its platform. Juniper Networks has also been making progress in the RIC space. Japan’s Rakuten Symphony late last year selected the vendor’s RIC platform as the sole selection as part of the Rakuten Symworld Platform. The vendor has also conducted a multivendor RIC trial with European telecom giant Vodafone and open RAN provider Parallel Wireless. Jai Thattil, senior director and head of service provider strategic marketing at Juniper Networks, joined us on the latest SDxCentral 7 Layers podcast to provide more details into the vendor’s RIC work, what has gone into developing a RIC platform to work across vendors and operators, and challenges still facing the still maturing ecosystem. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The SDxCentral ecosystem witnessed significant change in 2022, highlighted by ongoing cybersecurity attacks, the proliferation of new networking technologies, and industry changing merger and acquisition activity. Basically, another year at the office. The SDxCentral editorial staff sat down before the year ticked over to discuss what they found to be the biggest news and trends across their respective beats in 2022. While the sound quality might indicate that conversation was secretly recorded, rest assured we all knew what was up. Reporter Tommy Clift led off, touching on the rapid perception evolution blockchain technology went through in 2022, moving away from its association with the troubling cryptocurrency space to being used in commercial situations by established telecommunication players. Editor Nancy Liu had an exceptionally busy year covering the cybersecurity space for SDxCentral. Liu touched on near non-stop cyberattacks that hit some of the industry’s biggest names, including Uber, Microsoft, Okta, and Cisco. These attacks also targeted soft targets like city governments and school districts. Liu also highlighted the ongoing adoption of zero-trust network access (ZTNA) platforms that overtook rival cybersecurity acronyms for buzz in 2022. This was helped by the late-year push by the White House to deploy ZTNA principles across government agencies. Reporter Emma Chervek hit on the ongoing developer talent shortage challenge facing the software and cloud ecosystem, which remains a challenge in this post-pandemic environment. Chervek noted this challenge led to increased attention for low-code and no-code platforms designed to lower the barrier for application development. SDxCentral Editorial Assistant Julia King injected some sassy commentary on the secure access service edge (SASE), which continued to grow in 2022. The SASE space hit a level of maturity that has vendors now looking to differentiate through all-inclusive offerings instead of past partnerships, which itself could lead to greater industry consolidation in 2023. And finally, Executive Editor Dan Meyer touched on the surging attention placed on private networks, which vendors and operators think could prove a compelling 5G enterprise use case. More ominously, Meyer noted Broadcom’s pending $69 billion acquisition of VMware could cause significant ripples across the cloud and virtualization space. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Palo Alto Networks Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Niall Browne sat down with SDxCentral Editor Nancy Liu in Las Vegas during the company’s Ignite event to discuss how Palo Alto Networks secures the company itself and its customers using its own zero-trust network access (ZTNA 2.0), secure access service edge (Prisma Access), cloud security (Prisma Cloud), and autonomous security operation center (Cortex XSIAM) products, the unique challenges it faces to secure one of the largest security companies in the world, and what keeps Browne up at night. Palo Alto Networks is transitioning to a platform approach for security that includes its next-generation firewalls, zero trust-based authentication, and SASE services. Browne believes next-generation ZTNA and SASE are the answer to securing a hybrid workforce. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mobile telecom operators continue to ramp their 5G core deployments with many of those efforts based on running vital core operations in a cloud environment. This is an effort that Working Group Two CEO Erlend Prestgard said is critical for operators to monetize their next-generation 5G deployments. “We’re trying to steal the business model back from the tech giants and bring them back to telecom,” Prestgard said in an interview with SDxCentral. Working Group Two’s efforts in this scheme are by offering a cloud-based 5G core to operators that they can then plug their 5G radio access network (RAN) and support systems into. That core sits on Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) cloud infrastructure that operators can tap into through an as-a-service model. Working Group Two was started in late 2017 after Cisco struck a deal with Norway-based telecommunications provider Telenor on a new venture to offer cloud solutions for mobile operators. Working Group Two was tasked with helping mobile operators use cloud-based platforms to launch new services. Telenor provided the platform’s technology, which is an open source, cloud-native, multi-tenancy, full stack mobile core network delivered as a service. The software behind the platform is a single code base built on multiple radio networks. Cisco provided a virtualized version of its evolved packet core (vEPC) and APIs into that packet core that are available to the Working Group Two platform. Cisco also provided go-to-market support for bringing those services to enterprise, commercial, IoT, and mass-market customers. Working Group Two today counts deals with operators in Sweden and its native Norway, with a significant customer in CK Hutchison. Prestgard explained that operators realize the importance and need for a cloud-native core but are now trying to tackle integration complexity. “Integrating with the outside world, that still takes time,” Prestgard said. “So, spinning up, I think we've sold that part of the equation. I think now we're working to simplify, automate, externalize as much configuration, integration work as possible, which is also a long journey.” Check out our latest SDxCentral 7 Layers Podcast to get more insight from Prestgard on market opportunities and challenges. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chief Innovation Officer for the City of Las Vegas Michael Sherwood and Armis CTO Steve Gyurindak joined SDxCentral Editor Nancy Liu to discuss Las Vegas’ efforts on becoming a smart city, what it’s like to secure the Sin City, and what cities should look out for when building a smart-city network. Sherwood touted Las Vegas has one of the largest private cellular networks for a municipality that “provides connectivity to sensor systems, provides wayfinding as well as connecting students to schools.” “Smart City just really rolls into how we use technology to make better outcomes, create better amenities, and really create a great experience while you're here and technology is a huge part of that from safety and security to traffic flow.” Sherwood said. “We also have a mind on security and a mind on understanding our assets in ways we've never understood before.” One of the biggest things Armis discovered when securing the city is the diversity of different devices on its network, spanning from typical PC printers, IP cameras, to even game consoles, Gyurindak noted. And Armis is happy to offer the visibility for the network, he added. “Understanding the gravity of everything that is connecting and how it interacts, and being able to assemble a cogent security policy around that is what is the challenges I continuously hear,” Gyurindak said. “You need to use tools and different types of technologies to help you guard your portfolio of assets. So to that regard, budgets aren't going to balloon up right away. It really falls back to what types of tools can you provide to staff that can help them and assist them in a manner that gives them the greatest visibility of the network but also allows the business to continue,” Sherwood said. “We can't clamp it down to what we can't operate. But we certainly can use tools to help give us insights and tell us where our risks are, so that we can better defend and protect, [which] is a huge advantage.”   Photo (L-R): Steve Gyurindak and Michael Sherwood. Source: Armis and the City of Las Vegas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Craig Box expands on his early work in the Kubernetes ecosystem, how it has impacted the cloud market, and what’s next for the platform. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week’s episode of 7 Layers, SDxCentral reporter Tommy Clift sat down with Matt Price, Cisco Vice President of IoT Engineering and Operations to discuss the transforming connectivity demands of future transportations systems, and how 5G and multi-access technologies are playing a pivotal role in its progress. Because transportation ecosystems must chiefly prioritize safety, having ubiquitous and extremely reliable connectivity is mission-critical, Price explained. 5G provides improved security to aid car manufacturers and fleet managers to meet the connected vehicle application requirements, and control data transport costs. The discussion echoes Cisco’s bullish behavior with its 5G plans. The vendor discussed its pivot towards private 5G at the MWC Las Vegas event in September – which first gained significant momentum earlier in the year when it launched its private 5G platform at the MWC Barcelona event. Michael Beesley, CTO for service provider networking at Cisco, explained during an interview that the vendor has seen the market slowly evolve over the past several months, and Cisco’s embedded position in a lot of enterprises sets it up to take advantage of this evolution. “It’s an area that we think is a nice intersection of both our abilities and where we see the market need and customer need,” Beesley said. “Certainly, as we engage with enterprises, both the IT and the OT sides, the fact that Cisco’s already a significant partner, we already have significant technological portfolios in these accounts, both direct and through partners, the ability to offer and service a private 5G offering that is fully integrated with the enterprise systems, fully integrated with WiFi policy, visibility, security, we think that’s a key attribute that we bring to the table,” he explained. Stream now to hear the full 7 Layers interview. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Deloitte’s managing director of Risk & Financial Advisory Colin Soutar and Deloitte Specialist Leader Itan Barmes joined SDxCentral Editor Nancy Liu to dive into quantum security on this episode of the SDxCentral 7 Layers podcast. Soutar and Barmes answered some frequently asked questions about quantum security, such as what is it really going to take to break current cryptography with a quantum computer and why shouldn’t we fixate on the number of qubits to break the crypto or as a measure of progress? Barmes argues that the number of qubits doesn’t give the full picture. “The number of qubits you need in order to implement the [Shor’s] algorithm, even just on paper, is just one aspect. There are many others. And the danger that I see in focusing so much on the number of qubits is that people create predictions about the timeline when we don't have the hardware exactly running the algorithm,” he said. “So we can make a prediction, but it's most likely not going to go this way. There are many more aspects that are important here, not just the number of qubits.” Soutar urges organizations to focus on preparation instead. “It was fairly noticeable that a lot of people have been talking about particular dates when are quantum computers going to be mature enough and commercially viable enough that we can implement Shor's [algorithm] and render this attack?” Soutar said. “The over-fixation on a date, I think it's just the wrong message for industry in general … It's really not a matter of when, it's whether organizations are ready to deal with it when it comes along.” The discussions about Shor's algorithm and technological advances in quantum computing and even the standardization around post-quantum cryptography currently should be detached a little from organizations’ quantum-ready and crypto-agile efforts, they said. Lastly, “let's not have potential vulnerabilities overshadow all of the positive applications of quantum computing around simulation and optimization and so on,” Soutar said. “The technology at large can provide the benefits that it's certainly been promising as it continues to evolve.” Listen to the full interview now. Photo (L-R): Colin Soutar and Itan Barmes Source: Deloitte Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Andrea Caldini, VP of network engineering at Verizon, has seen a lot of wireless technology evolution during her 20 years at the telecom giant. This includes that carrier’s initial 3G launch based on CDMA technology, its radical move to 4G LTE more than a decade ago, and its more recent push into 5G. “I remember at some point thinking 64 kb/s was really fast,” Caldini joked during an interview with SDxCentral. Caldini cited Verizon’s early 5G work, including its early work toward 5G standards that were initially outside of the normal standards bodies. Verizon has also been able to inject a lot more spectrum into its 5G services based on that technology standards ability to support larger “chunks” of spectrum. Caldini cited the carrier’s extensive millimeter wave (mmWave) spectrum holdings that support significant capacity and its ongoing deployment of its C-Band spectrum that is providing a broader reach. As part of that push, Verizon itself has been able to expand those network updates broadly across the organization, including into its Verizon Business Group. That group has been a driver of Verizon’s recent business operations. Verizon 5G and the Private, MEC Space That work has also begun to spread more into the private 5G space, which Caldini said is a “huge opportunity here,” and the is “a gateway into mobile edge compute.” Verizon’s MEC efforts include agreements with all three major hyperscalers – Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) – to provide optionality to enterprises. This allows the carrier to support two deployment models: private MEC and public MEC. The private MEC path involves an on-premises device deployment that allows an enterprise to maintain total control over its data. The carrier runs this on top of its agreement with AWS, Microsoft, and GCP. The public MEC work taps into nearly 20 locations where Verizon is collocated with the hyperscalers. This model is one Verizon executives have previously stated provide a connection point to within 150 miles of most enterprises. “As you’re creating these solutions, you’re looking to have your workloads closer, so you might have a low-latency need and need to have that workload closer,” Caldini said, adding that this private and public MEC integration then allows an enterprise to adjust where they want to run applications and still have it all under strict control. “They all come together as you create these new services to support a business need.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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CIOs are expecting their IT budgets to increase an average of 5.1% due to a “triple squeeze” of economic pressure, the talent shortage and supply chain challenges, according to a new survey from Gartner released in time for the Gartner IT Symposium 2023 in Orlando, Florida. The 2023 Gartner CIO and Technology Executive Survey gathered data from 2,203 CIO respondents in 81 countries and all major industries, and representing approximately $15 trillion in revenue/public-sector budgets and $322 billion in IT spending. The respondents ranked their company’s objectives objectives for digital technology investment over the last two years. The top two objectives were to improve operational excellence (53%) and improve customer or citizen experience (45%). In comparison, only 27% cited growing revenue as a primary objective and 22% cited improving cost efficiency. During this episode of 7 Layers, Daniel Sanchez-Reina, VP analyst at Gartner, talked about the survey results, and how CEOs and boards are anticipating digital initiatives, working to bridge silos in their organizations, reducing the talent gap through unconventional methods, and empowering employees outside of the IT team to contribute to building digital capabilities. Sanchez-Reina is a VP Analyst in CIO Leadership, Culture and People. Sanchez-Reina covers the complex challenges of culture change in organizations, high-performing teams, leadership, CIO influence and CIO role evolution. He provides research on a worldwide basis, advising clients on their specific needs to achieve sustainable growth. Listen to the podcast to hear what Sanchez-Reina had to say. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

AT&T’s Assistant Vice President of Security Dan Solero sat down with SDxCentral Editor Nancy Liu at AT&T’s Global Headquarters in Dallas, Texas for this episode of 7 Layers. Solero noted the security industry is facing a lot of pressure due to emerging technologies and modalities, new initiatives in the legislative and regulatory environment, and ongoing talent shortages.  To address some of those challenges, a few years ago, AT&T announced it will be a public-cloud first company, meaning the first step of its IT strategy is to determine how to get to the cloud, he said. In hybrid and multi-cloud environments, “we have to have a centralized point of view to monitor what's happening from a security perspective. So we've built our own set of systems leveraging some proprietary technology that we have and commercial off-the-shelf solutions, mainly from the market segment called cloud security posture management. And what that gives us is an ability to have a broad view of our AT&T assets out in multiple clouds and apply consistent standards and detection mechanisms across all of them.” The tier-one operator also has quantum ready on its roadmap by 2025. “It's so important to be taking action now,” Solero said. “We've declared almost like a call to action within the company, that we need to be ready for quantum risk by a certain time period, [and] we've chosen 2025. And what that means is by the end of 2025, we'll have a good plan and a good awareness of what needs to be done and in what priority order we need to address these issues and have a good understanding of how to take action.” “We're a couple of years into trying to establish practices and raise awareness within the company that we need a better inventory,” he added. “We need a more complete inventory and information about our encryption usage, where it's used, and what it is protecting. I would say that we're probably within a few months of having a plan established, and then it's all about execution.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices