In our last blog, we gave a rundown of what the Telecommunications (Security) Act (TSA) is, why it’s been introduced, who it affects, when it starts, and how firms can prepare. Here, we take a closer look into the themes introduced by the Act, explore how the telecoms industry can explore zero trust to further improve its security posture, and outline the benefits that can be gained when complying.

When the Telecoms Security Act (TSA) was introduced, it was labelled as ‘one of the strongest telecoms security regimes in the world, a rise in standards across the board, set by the government rather than the industry’ by Matt Warman, former Minister of State at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport. The industry is certainly feeling the impending impact of the act – with one industry pundit at an event we ran recently describing it as a ‘multi-generational change’ for the sector.

One of the headline grabbers stemming from the Act are the associated fines. With the new powers granted to it by the Act, Ofcom now has the responsibility to oversee operators’ security policies and impose fines of up to 10 percent of turnover or £100,000 a day in case operators don’t comply or the blanket ban of telecoms vendors such as Huawei. Sounds like the typical ‘stick’-based costly compliance messaging that no-one particularly wants to hear, right? But what if the TSA had some ‘carrot’-based business benefits that are much less discussed?

The TSA introduces a new security framework for the UK telecoms sector to ensure that public telecommunications providers operate secure and resilient networks and services and manage their supply chains appropriately. ny of the themes introduced in the code of practice can be aligned with the themes in a zero trust security model, which are also a focus for CISOs.

Zero trust security is a concept (also known as ‘never trust, always verify’) which establishes trust in users and devices through authentication and continuous monitoring of each access attempt, with custom security policies that protect every application. At Duo, our approach to zero trust is:

• First, accurately establish trust – to verify user and device trust and increase visibility
• Second, consistently enforce trust-based access – to grant the appropriate level of access and enforce access policies, based on the principle of least privilege.
• Third, change is inevitable, especially when it comes to risk, so continuously verify trust by reassessing trust level and adjust access accordingly after initial access has been granted
• And fourth, dynamically respond to change in trust by investigating and orchestrating response to potential incidents with increased visibility into suspicious changes in trust level.

A crucial point to note here: much like a solution that claims to help with all aspects of the TSA, telecom providers should be wary of any vendor who claims to have a zero-trust product. Both are far much bigger than any ‘silver bullet’ solution purports to offer. But there is a good reason a zero-trust framework has been mandated by the US White House for all federal agencies, and recommended by the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) and the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).

As well as helping to mitigate the significant cyber risks presented to the telecoms industry, a zero-trust strategy provides many business benefits. Our recent Guide to Zero Trust Maturity shows that:

• Organisations that reported a mature implementation of zero trust were more than twice as likely to achieve business resilience (63.6%) than those with a limited zero trust implementation.
• Organisations that achieved mature implementations of zero trust were twice as likely to report excelling at the following five security practices:
  • Accurate threat detection
  • Proactive tech refresh
  • Prompt disaster recovery
  • Timely incident response
  • Well-integrated tech
• Organisations that claimed to have a mature implementation of zero trust were 2X more likely to report excelling across desired outcomes such as greater executive confidence (47%).

A robust zero-trust security program includes phishing-resistant multi factor authentication (MFA), access controls for devices and applications, risk-signalling, dynamic authentication, firewalls, analytics, web monitoring and more. As I said previously there is no one answer to zero trust, or indeed the TSA, but getting the basics right like strong MFA, single sign on (SSO) and device trust are an easy and effective way to get started.

The TSA will be a huge undertaking for industry, but it is important to focus on the benefits such a wide-reaching set of regulatory rules will inevitably result in. As another guest from our recent event put it: ‘the TSA is full of the latest and modern best practice around security, so the aim really is to raise the tide and all ships, which can only be a good thing.’

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