Securing a lasting legacy for the IoT

Avneesh Prakash, Vice President of Mobility and MOVE at Tata Communications is a pragmatic visionary. He’s excited about the potential of IoT – but well aware of the security challenges that arise from connecting billions of devices. And if anyone should know about the vast scale of connections, it’s Tata, with a partner ecosystem that includes 600 global network providers.

As Vice President of Mobility and MOVE at Tata Communications, Avneesh Prakash is, unsurprisingly excited by the IoT. Not only is he managing one of the world’s largest ecosystems of network partners, he may have also solved an important security issue for the future of IoT. I recently had the pleasure of spending time with him to learn more.

Tata takes a grounded approach to partner ecosystems. Their philosophy is that they don’t need to conquer the world, just partner with it. As such, digital ecosystem enablement is a key part of the company’s DNA. It runs through all they do, allowing them to bring together through collaboration a host of digital assets from cloud, mobility and connectivity offerings, to applications and more.

It’s a strategy that’s paid off: Tata has partnered with over 600 network providers around the world so they can offer their customers ubiquitous connectivity and IoT solutions. Sitting behind this is a strategy to keep everything simple: his customers what he refers to as a ‘single pane of glass’ interface – a very simple interface that solves a multitude of issues.

This experience of extensive collaboration and ecosystems has also delivered another benefit: security. The explosion of device density and interactions is increasing vulnerabilities, and a growing concern for Tata’s mobility & MOVE customers.

According to Avneesh, ‘customers want security by design, not as an afterthought’. So, rather than searching for a solution that could account for all current variables they reimagined IoT security from the ground up, embedding it into multiple layers. Starting with microchips, and expanding to the device, service, network, and application levels, Tata makes sure that security meets the context and the content of each solution so their customers feel protected. It’s a solution that can also work for all kinds of deployment.

In the context of IoT and ecosystem enablement, Tata focuses its collaboration efforts in two ways. On one hand they simplify, unify and digitize connectivity management for their customers; on the other hand Tata collaborates with partners to create what they refer to as ‘born connected’ devices with security embedded at the microchip level.

These are just some of the many points that Avneesh covers in our latest Accelerators podcast. Stream or download now to go further, faster and beyond – and do so securely.