The move brings together security experts from different sections of the company and the new unit will operate under Nokia’s mobile broadband unit.
The security unit is designed to develop the company’s telco security and will serve as a central office for security processes, partnerships and guidance for product development.
With the new unit, the Finnish vendor hopes to integrate security into new products, expand its portfolio with security products and services, and develop business models around telco security.
“We will continue to encourage industry dialogue and knowledge sharing in terms of security research to improve awareness of this crucially important area of telco business, including with open source software,” said Marc Rouanne, EVP of mobile broadband at Nokia. “This will become critically important as mobile broadband networks are starting to evolve towards the cloud.”
The new security unit is a response to findings in Nokia’s 2014 customer acquisition and retention study which showed that 75% of customers consider security to be the operator’s responsibility.
The move follows the news that Alcatel-Lucent and French security company Thales are in talks over a potential takeover of Alcatel's cybersecurity unit, which is part of a broader agreement which would see Thales strengthen the latter's portfolio in the field of secured networks.
