GPRS security as a QoS in the telecommunication industry case of Vodafone Egypt

Abstract

The changes taking place in the world today are largely due to the developments and evolution in a number of industries; one of which is information and communication technology. Focusing on communications solutions with an emphasis on business applications, it is obvious to claim that business applications that are being deployed with 2.5G wireless networks fall into two general categories: (a) horizontal applications “mobile office” such as electronic mailing, voice communications, Internet access, short messaging and personal information management (PIM) tools and (b) vertical applications “sales force automation”(SFA) and field force automation (FFA), fleet management, government communications and public safety, telemetry and remote monitoring, point-of-sale as well as financial services. The new generation of wireless devices being introduced to the market for 2.5G global system for mobile communications (GSM) and general packet radio service (GPRS) services is designed to support these applications, with features ranging from small standard keyboards to high resolutions rich colored screens. The impressive growth of cellular mobile telephony as well as the number of Internet users promises an exciting potential for a market that combines both innovations. The general packet radio service (GPRS) is a new non-voice value-added service that allows information to be sent and received across a mobile telephone network. Users of GPRS benefit from shorter access time and higher data rates. It is important to note that the standard GPRS network itself does not offer a reasonably secure solution for providing mobile access to a corporate local area network (LAN). Although, the air interface ciphering and the GPRS authentication process are secured, the IP traffic is unencrypted all the way from the serving GPRS support node (SGSN) to the corporate LAN gateway. The most feasible solution for secure remote connections would be to use an end-to-end virtual private network (VPN) solution from the mobile station (MS) to the corporate LAN gateway where the traffic is encrypted for the whole connection and the user can slip to the Internet from the nearest access point. It is important to separate the user traffic from the control traffic to guarantee high level of security with a minor impact on quality of service (QoS) which means providing consistent and predictable data delivery service that can lead to customer application requirement satisfaction. However, to achieve that security has to be looked at as the key player in the new GSM data networks when deploying GPRS. This paper 1 1 The paper is based on a research conducted by Mohammed M M El Sayed in 2002 as part of fulfilling his Master of Science requirements for a degree in business information technology from Middlesex University in the UK. demonstrates the case of Vodafone Egypt, one of the mobile operators, in deploying GPRS networks while focusing on exploring the business opportunities and motivating factors to implement GPRS. Moreover, the paper proposes solutions on how to create secure connections over GPRS networks while proposing a security policy for Vodafone Egypt.