Zain KSA and Enea announce world-first next-gen signaling overlay security technology innovation

Enea, a global telecom network security specialist, and Zain KSA, a mobile telecommunications and digital services provider in the Kingdom, announced a collaboration to pilot the world’s first mobile network signaling overlay technology, which significantly extends signaling firewall capabilities. The patent-pending signaling security overlay was conceived in Enea’s Technology Research unit during 2023 with patents filed in December 2023.

Enea’s signaling overlay technology represents a novel approach to enhancing mobile network security and efficiency. By employing transport layeraware distributed ingestion across both virtual/cloud and traditional network infrastructures, signaling firewalls gain deeper insights into network events, ensuring robust protection against emerging threats. Leveraging the adaptive signaling firewall’s advanced techniques for detection and protocol correlation, the overlay technology enables mobile operators to safeguard their networks against sophisticated attacks.

The signaling security overlay technology pilot project will be undertaken this year in Zain KSA’s network in Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom is at the forefront of 5G development as part of Saudi Vision 2030’s goal to become an ICT leader and transform into a sustainable digital economy. With the global threats on telecom networks escalating, network security has become a high priority for Zain KSA, which has consistently invested in security for both signaling and messaging to safeguard its extensive digital ecosystem. This pilot will accelerate the technology innovation and deployment of next-generation signaling security solutions for complex and more sophisticated network security attacks.

An MoU for the world-first pilot was signed at Mobile World