Tag Archive for: guidance

Russia’s MTS mobile operator posts profit rise, ups guidance, Telecom News, ET Telecom

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Russia's MTS mobile operator posts profit rise, ups guidanceMOSCOW: Russia’s biggest mobile operator MTS on Thursday reported a 46.5% net profit jump to 17.2 billion roubles ($232.06 million) in the second quarter and raised its full-year revenue guidance to high single-digit growth.

MTS is one of several Russian companies developing services beyond its core business. President and CEO Vyacheslav Nikolaev said non-core segments – fintech, retail, media, cloud and digital – contributed more than half of revenue growth year-on-year.

“MTS Bank in particular has now achieved sufficient scale to become an engine of profitability for the group as a whole,” Nikolaev said in a statement.

The bank added around 100,000 customers in the quarter and posted net profit of 3.4 billion roubles for the first half of 2021, versus a 0.9 billion rouble loss in the same period last year, MTS said.

Second-quarter revenue was up 10.6% to 128.6 billion roubles. The company said it expects adjusted operating income before depreciation and amortisation (OIBDA) to rise by at least 5% this year, up from a previous forecast of 4% growth.

Adjusted OIBDA was 10.2% higher at 57.2 billion roubles in the second quarter.

MTS confirmed its 2021 capex guidance of between 100-110 billion roubles. It said Russian legal requirements that telecom operators store certain data for up to six months meant it would need to spend around 50 billion roubles on data storage systems between H2 2018 and H1 2023.

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NSA releases guidance on voice and video communications security

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The National Security Agency (NSA) has released a new report giving organizations insight into the current best practices around the security of unified communications (UC) and voice and video over IP (VVoIP).

The report, titled Deploying Secure Unified Communications/Voice and Video over IP Systems, also looks at the potential risks to improperly secured UC/VVoIP systems.

Modern communications infrastructure in most organizations is tightly integrated with other IT networks, increasing the attack surface for hackers to gain access. The NSA said that UC/VVoIP devices would pose the same hacking risks to organizations through spyware, viruses, software vulnerabilities, or other malicious means if left inadequately secured.

“Malicious actors could penetrate the IP networks to eavesdrop on conversations, impersonate users, commit toll fraud and perpetrate denial of service attacks,” the NSA said in a statement.

“Compromises can lead to high-definition room audio and/or video being covertly collected and delivered to a malicious actor using the IP infrastructure as a transport mechanism.”

The report outlined the tips and tricks organizations should undertake to enhance security, such as segmenting voice and video traffic from data traffic and separate IP address ranges to limit access to a common set of devices.

In addition to using VLANs, administrators should also use access control lists and routing rules to limit access to devices across VLANs. According to the NSA, this makes it more difficult for a malicious actor to access open services on phones and servers from outside the VLAN.

Another best practice the NSA outlined is implementing layer 2 protections and address resolution protocol (ARP) and IP spoofing defenses. It also recommended only using switches with these protections. 

The NSA also said that PSTN gateways should authenticate all UC/VVoIP connections and not allow calls directly from IP phones without the UC/VVoIP server’s permission.

The agency also urged organizations to use only vendor-signed patches downloaded from trusted sources. 

The NSA said taking advantage of a UC/VVoIP system’s benefits, such as cost savings in operations or advanced call processing,…

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NSA Issues VPN Security Guidance

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The National Security Agency released guidance this week on securing IPsec virtual private networks as companies across the US continue to grapple with remote working in the wake of the coronavirus …
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