ITU-T Recommendations

Recommendation ITU-T X.1452 classifies potential use cases of security services provided by operators and analyse specific requirements for security services, thus providing guidelines for operators to safeguard and improve their security services.

Due to the growing number of innovations in services in network and telecommunication domains, operators face a pressing need to explore new services based on their network and services capabilities. In this transformation, operators have not only accumulated new assets and experiences with technologies and services for network and telecommunication, but also the capability of offering security services based on the full extent of their network and infrastructure deployments and operations. The specific nature of this class of services makes them exhibit a number of differences with more traditional telecommunication services (e.g., phone call, short message or mobile network access). In this context, the portfolio of security services that are currently in production and explored by operators need specific integration with the resources and assets of the telecommunication network and infrastructure; the risk level of this portfolio is actually higher should the security service itself be compromised as it is precisely supposed to turn the operator offering it into a security provider for end market customers. A compromise of the service will result in loss of trust by customers and will affect the whole range of services offered by the operator and will significantly increase the overall churn level, and customer dissatisfaction and disloyalty. Therefore, security assurance, defined as the degree of confidence reached in the security service, needs to be studied thoroughly. In order to offer a technical reference for operators and to guarantee security, security service guidelines provided by the operator need to be analysed and established.