Nokia opens Berlin security hub after strategy overhaul
Inside the Nokia Security Center. Image: Nokia Nokia has unveiled a new security centre in Berlin, following an overhaul of its mobile security strategy.
The centre, opened today in the Germany capital, will house a demo area, research facilities, and a startup space.
The demo centre will play home to a test LTE network and will showcase the company's products dealing with both current threats, and examining future ones.
Alongside the demo area is a competence centre - a lab environment with tech from Nokia's mobile network infrastructure, as well as kit from its partners - to see how the security products would fare in a real-world network. The centre's traffic simulators, for example, can model up to 5,000 base stations, to see if network stability is impacted by a particular product being tested.
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The Nokia Security Center will also host an 'intensive knowledge exchange platform' - the centre is nearby educational organisations including the Fraunhofer Institute and Technical University of Berlin - and a startup area.
"We will explore upcoming threats and use cases, together with our operators. If we identify demand for new technology and approaches, then we will scan our industrial environment of startups to see which one is active in which area, and together with Nokia Growth Partners, we plan to jointly invest into them," Jan Kok, head of the Nokia Security Center, said - and perhaps incorporate the startups' products into Nokia's own portfolio.
The opening of the Nokia Security Center follows the company's creation of a security business unit in June of this year; security was previously sold as part of mobile infrastructure offerings. Nokia is also putting more work into fostering the security ecosystem around the company - for example, when it sees new threats arising, approaching the appropriate companies to work with Nokia to address them.
The decision to revamp the strategy was a reaction to the changing threat landscape for mobile carriers, according to Nokia, and their willingness to spend to tackle it. "Security as such for mobile network operators' infrastructure is getting into focus and justifying more investment in the future," Kok said.
The change is spurred by an increasing adoption of IP across mobile networks, more cybercriminals targeting the mobile sphere in general and consumers' phone bills in particular, and increasing demand due to the critical nature of networks.
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