Innovation Security Day: Telefónica’s security strategy for its customers

Nowadays, Internet threats cause a great damage to businesses, not only in economic terms but also in terms of image and trust. Aware of this problem, Telefónica gathered last week 400 experts and customers, as well as systems and security heads, at its “Innovation Security Day”. The event, which was hosted in Telefónica’s Headquarters in Madrid had two main purposes

· To explain the strategy of Telefónica to face the threats of the Internet to the business world

· To present Telefónica’s portfolio of cyber-security products and services for companies and end users

In regards to the strategy to face the threats of the internet to the business world, the objective of Telefónica is to become the leading referent in cyber-security matters at world level. In order to achieve that goal Telefónica needs to innovate, and the best way to do so is through an own factory of ideas capable to develop innovative security products. Accordingly, Telefónica has launched this year Eleven Paths, a new company that runs like a fast and flexible start-up inside Telefónica Digital, whose main activity consists on testing new ideas and checking out if they work. Telefónica’s cyber-security strategy is based on three pillars: Intelligence, Protection, and Coordination and control.

In relation to Telefónica’s portfolio of cyber-security products and services for companies and end users, Telefónica aims to leave behind the discourse of “They are attacking me” and focus on a new one that answers to the “What, how, who and why?” Telefónica has materialized this change of mentality through the creation of a cyber-security ecosystem for its customers, focusing on detection, prevention and response.

Some of these new products and services are the following:

• Cyber Detect Threats: a detection and analysis service whose main value lies in digital intelligence. A team of experts in hacking, fraud, criminology and online communities tracks a great volume of information coming from open sources, internal nets whose use has been authorized and underground sites. In order to do an early detection, the information is analyzed, which helps the customer to anticipate to potential threats and take control of its own security. This service focuses on two main areas:
  • Reputation and brand protection against unauthorized use, domain misappropriation, offensive contents, counterfeits and abuse of digital identities.
  • Business disruption against information leaks, activism, net hacktivism, DDoS attacks, security mechanisms infringement and identity thefts.
• Faast: a detection service that consists on a persistent pentesting system developed by Eleven Paths. Faast automatizes the most recent techniques of pentesting in a recurring process that helps companies to detect security gaps from the point of view of an attacker.
• Metashield Protector: a prevention system developed by Eleven Paths that consists on a group of security solutions for companies. This service allows companies to eliminate metadata associated to documents in different environments such as web servers, sharepoint servers, file servers, etc. preventing from sensitive information leaks.
• Latch: another prevention service developed by Eleven Paths. Latch is an app for smartphones that allows users to create an additional security layer to protect their digital life. Latch allows users to manage when and which online services are available. In a friendly way, the user decides when to switch on/off these services, so nobody can access them as long as they are switched off. The app sends an alert each time that it detects that somebody is trying to access to any of the services that are disconnected. Therefore, without Latch, a digital identity can be hacked at any time whereas with Latch a digital identity cannot be hacked when the account is switched off.

The event also featured a round table on ethical hacking with cyber-security heads of companies and banks that are customers of Telefónica, and the cyber-security strategy of INTECO, the Spanish Institute of Communication Technologies.

Keep using the Internet but do it safely!