Safaricom Gains Valuable Insights and Rolls Out Security-as-a-Service (SECaaS) For Its Customers
About Safaricom
Safaricom PLC is a listed Kenyan mobile network operator headquartered at Safaricom House in Nairobi, Kenya. With 29 million connections, they are the largest telecommunications provider in Kenya and one of the most profitable companies in the East and Central African region. The company offers mobile telephony, mobile money transfer, consumer electronics, ecommerce, cloud computing, data, music streaming, and fiber optic services. It is most renowned as the home of MPESA, a mobile banking SMS-based service.
Challenge
Safaricom has been satisfied with our traffic management solutions and our subscriber management platform for many years. The first part of the challenge in this deal was to optimize the way they were analyzing the vast amounts of traffic on their networks.
Additionally, Safaricom wanted to add anti-malware and anti-phishing to their networks while leveraging the existing solutions that had already been deployed by Allot. Rumors of parental control regulation in the region have been circulating and the operator wanted to be prepared by rolling out parental control functionality to their customers ahead of the official regulations. Finally, their research indicated that their customers were interested in buying Security-as-a-Service from their ISP, and Safaricom wanted to differentiate themselves from the competition in the region by being the first operator to enter this market.
Solution
The existing Allot infrastructure empowered us to move quickly and the first challenge we met was for optimized analytics. By deploying ClearSee on the SG Teras at each site, the big data that was being captured by the network was able to be captured and turned into valuable reports that indicated network trends and anomalies. By having a clearer understanding of the network activity Safaricom can make informed decisions that will allow them to manage their network and make informed decisions on future network investments.
The next step taken to assist the network operator was to add NetworkSecure solution to the infrastructure which provided the anti-phishing, anti-malware and content filtering protection that they required. Additionally, this solution allows the Safaricom end-users to enforce parental control from their devices and simultaneously protects them from malicious attacks on their home network. The addition of this feature also serves as the operator’s entrance to the SECaaS market.
Safaricom is the first network operator to introduce these security services in the region, which helps to differentiate them from the rest of the competition.
Benefits
Along with existing ClearSee Analytics and the addition of NetworkSecure to the existing solutions, Safaricom can:
- Increase Customer Satisfaction and Revenue
Safaricom’s customers will benefit from a more secure network which increases their satisfaction. The sale of these services adds incremental ARPU for the operator, so everybody wins.
- Improve Operations, Product Planning and Marketing Visibility
ClearSee Analytics allows for detailed analytics for various stakeholders in Safaricom, facilitating Safaricom’s decision makers to make informed and educated business and operational decisions.
- Differentiate Service and Scale Easily
Offering customers the ability to purchase SECaaS offerings sets Safaricom apart from competition, and the Allot solution is designed to scale with ease. Safaricom plans to break into mobile SECaaS down the line with this scalability.
