I’m the Chief Revenue Officer of Shield IoT and a cybersecurity consultant by trade, I used to run several startups with the last one being Pentera Security. I was the first sales manager at the company and ran the sales from zero revenue until the company became a unicorn. I’m all about innovation in the world of cyber security, this time with Shield IoT and its innovation in cyber security which concerns the cellular IoT market.
Firstly, we are unique because the entire ecosystem around cellular IoT is quite new. I believe that you will see a lot of unique solutions coming in the next 20 years to this amazing connectivity market which has a lot of advantages!
However, cellular IoT presents a paradox for the business user that does not exist in other connectivity markets like IT or OT. The data owner or the organisation that uses this connectivity is not the network infrastructure owner, the network infrastructure owner is actually the connectivity provider or the operator. This creates a problem of lack of visibility, control, and of course, lack of security for those business customers who wish to use cellular connectivity, a problem that we are solving today with Shield IoT.
Regulation is important not only in cellular IoT but in any type of connectivity. In cellular IoT, it has been very challenging because organisations don’t have proper visibility and it’s very hard for them to continuously monitor their assets to know if they’re being attacked or if they’re operating correctly.
However compliance, you now have GDPR for privacy in Europe, CCPA in the States, regulations regarding financial transactions, and regulations for critical infrastructure. There was a period when those governing or regulatory bodies organisations time to get prepared, but today we see those liability issues and fines taking force and organisations really getting into problems.
I must say that I’m a big fan of Kaleido! When we had a technology and were strategising its implementation, we based a lot of our understanding on Kaleido’s findings.
First of all, it’s very important to explain that the cost is not something that the vendors are dealing with – the cost is usually driven by the government. If the government thinks or in our case for example the European Union thinks that privacy is something that needs to be protected, they will place the right motivations for the organisations to deal with the cost.
Now when we are talking about, for example, cellular IoT connectivity, the costs related to cyber security or meeting regulations are not attached to this cost of connectivity by any means. An organisation that needs to meet a certain type of regulation will not be allowed to do their main activity or will receive very high fines. As a result, what we are actually dealing with is finding and developing technologies that will provide the tools to equip businesses using cellular IoT to effectively operate within regulatory requirements.
All the connectivity service providers we work with have invested a lot of resources in building the right procedures and buying technologies, to provide security to their customers. The main problem we encounter is that these implemented technologies are not visible to the customer and the customer lacks an understanding of what’s happening in the background of the telco.
Our platform addresses this by providing operators with an enterprise-grade solution that gives full visibility into these assets, allowing the customer to continuously monitor, detect threats, and mitigate them themselves. We are giving them a level of control over a network they do not own; while they retain ownership of their data, enabling them to manage the threat management cycle. We are also enabling them if already practising cyber security to generate automated compliance reports that will protect them against liability in case of a data breach or other events. It’s providing business customers full control over their devices – an entirely different approach!
Now, what is the value for the connectivity service provider? Firstly, this is a real differentiator, enabling them to increase their customer base. If a competitor offers this enhanced visibility and security, it can become a deciding factor for critical infrastructure and other compliance-focused customers.
Secondly, this is a monetisation platform. The idea is that by providing visibility as a premium service, connectivity providers are able to tap into new budget owners. There is a land and expand approach here because in connectivity, usually sales are dealing with the operations team and they don’t always speak the same language as Chief Information Security officers or finance departments in charge of meeting regulation and compliance. Here the system enables them to automatically expand their activity into those different budget owners, providing them with additional premium services such as the capability to respond to attacks and generate automated compliance reports. These are all generating new revenue streams on top of connectivity for the service providers.
I must say that I’m a big fan of Kaleido! When we had a technology and were strategising its implementation, we based much of our understanding on Kaleido’s findings. Their research insights showed a problem today with the adoption of cellular IoT, the primary being that most organisations are afraid to adopt cellular IoT as they feel they lack control over these networks.
Secondly, we learned that many organisation executives are considering cellular IoT connectivity but are unwilling to proceed before having the right security and control measures in place. We learned that 85% of cellular IoT connectivity projects are being blocked due to security concerns, which led us to focus on this area.
We also understood the huge potential for connectivity service providers to generate new revenue streams beyond connectivity – not only with security but also by leveraging their unique position as network owners. It’s a problem but also a very big opportunity for every provider looking to generate new revenue streams on top of connectivity.
Additionally, we learned that connectivity prices are rapidly declining, turning connectivity into a commodity. Without any differentiator connectivity prices are barely keeping service providers alive and breathing, prompting them to look for new ways to generate new revenue streams. By being able to provide those value-added services on top of connectivity, service providers can have a real edge over the competition and generate new revenue streams. Eventually, those who develop and provide these value-added services on top of connectivity will be the ones who survive and eventually gain a bigger share of the market.
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The insights derived from Kaleido’s surveys and research have provided us with a more lucid perspective on the regional and global trends of IoT Roaming and trends of eSIM adoption. These insights are substantiated by both historical data and future projections, complemented by comprehensive studies conducted in these domains. This valuable information has played a pivotal role in guiding and informing our ongoing initiatives in these areas | Read Full Case Study
