AT&T showcased its network-embedded security solution at this week’s Mobile World Congress Barcelona 2024, tailored for small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs). The service offers malicious IP address blocking, next-generation firewall (NGFX) capabilities and other advanced security features without the additional cost of installation and equipment.

The tier-one operator noted 89% of SMBs consider cybersecurity a top priority but the challenge of limited IT and security resources is a significant hurdle. Recognizing this gap, AT&T embedded the security service, dubbed Dynamic Defense, within its network.

“The biggest thing is it's quick, cheap and impactful,” AT&T Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Rich Baich told SDxCentral. “Our customers today in general told us they need good security and they need it faster and they need it to work. We're not suggesting they're not using other security, they may continue to use that security, [or] they may find that this is good enough and they can get rid of some of their other things.”

AT&T claims its business customers of all sizes can order the product online and activate it in less than 30 minutes with no additional equipment or special onsite installation required. In comparison, other software- or hardware-based security solutions may take from three weeks to three months to be fully implemented, Baich said.

The Dynamic Defense offers three package options as follows:

1. Standard: The option is priced at $20/month, but now AT&T offers it at no cost for the life of a customer's AT&T Dedicated Internet service. It features AT&T's threat intelligence service — Dynamic Defense Shield, which can help block malicious IP addresses with limited blocklist exceptions included.
2. Advanced: The option costs $175/month, including the enhanced AT&T Dynamic Defense Shield service plus some NGFW capabilities such as traffic monitoring, geographical IP filtering, web filtering, basic threat prevention, reporting and logging, application-based reporting and policy version control.
3. Premium: The price is set at $275/month. Beyond threat intelligence and firewall, this option unlocks advanced threat protection and application-based policy creation capabilities.

The security service is now available to AT&T Dedicated Internet business customers in certain U.S. locations. The operator plans to expand to fixed wireless service and all other connectivity product users in the future, according to Senthil Ramakrishnan, AVP of product at AT&T Business.

He added that Dynamic Defense has some capability overlap with security information and event management (SIEM) tools, as some SMBs may not be familiar with these security tools or don’t have a security operations center (SOC) team. Moreover, the service is interoperable and can be integrated with other security services and providers.

AT&T last year created a standalone managed cybersecurity services business to advance its cybersecurity narrative — network-embedded security. It says Dynamic Defense is another effort toward this vision.

“Because we're sitting at the edge of the network, we are the first line of defense, so we detect and mitigate these threats at the network edge before they get to the customer's networking and stuff,” Ramakrishnan said.

He explained that AT&T's network backbone, which carries more than 680 petabytes of data every day, has software-defined provider edge routers, enabling the operator to insert the software security services to process the data. “So from a customer perspective, they don't have to touch anything.”

Baich said the network-embedded security may be a market differentiator for AT&T.

“I think it's key we talk about network embedded, right? So we want our customers that have the most secure and reliable network,” He said. “As we advance with this, we'll be able to add new features and new other things.”

“We're not trying to be a security vendor. I think this is really important. We want to make the experience secure for them. And good security also means good reliability as a whole, so whatever we can to help embed security in that network to make it better, we're going to do that,” Baich added.