In 2019, as communications service providers (CSPs) evolve their security strategies, end-to-end visibility of communications will become essential, writes Darren Anstee, the chief technology officer of Netscout. Increasingly the network will need to provide a unified means of observing, identifying and remediating malicious or suspicious communications and devices.

The number of devices connected to mobile networks will continue to grow exponentially, but with these devices having varying levels of resources and in-built security, monitoring and identifying threats will become both more critical, and more challenging.

To address these urgent challenges, visibility across the network will become even more vital. Only through monitoring key aspects of user and control plane activity will mobile operators be able to identify whether devices are behaving in a suspicious or malicious manner. Armed with this insight, they can identify potential threats, and rapidly rectify issues before they impact services. In doing so, they will improve the customer experience, ultimately helping to reduce churn rates.

Beyond just preventing threats, network visibility will equip carriers with the intelligence they need to launch new value-added services.

This insight will become increasingly important as 5G becomes a reality, but in 2019 we’ll see both fixed and mobile carriers look at how they can create additional revenue streams, offering new services to IoT application vendors, businesses and consumers. And they’ll be looking to their vendors to facilitate the development of these services.

The IoT is enabling new applications and optimisations in many industries, involving machine-to-machine (M2M) communications with very little over-sight. Mobile services are taking over from wireline in some areas, moving threats from potentially compromised – legacy – infrastructure onto new networks. Mobile network operators are ideally positioned to passively identify shifts in behavior that may indicate nefarious activity, and they should be looking to drive services, and new revenue, from these capabilities.

With CSPs’ revenues under mounting pressure, these new opportunities hold transformational potential and in 2019 we’ll see a growing number of CSPs start to enhance their security propositions, and utilise the wealth of data they’ve acquired.