CXO Forum 2024 Sponsor Series: In conversation with Mr Jonathan Connet, Aeris

As the Internet of Things continues to expand, the potential for cyber attacks is growing exponentially. How can there be a secure future for connected devices?

In this interview, Jonathan Connet, Chief Product Officer of IoT at Aeris Communications tells Bridge Alliance SVP Partnership & New Business Ken Wee about Aeris’ new IoT security solution, how it differs from the competition and the value it can bring to carrier partners when they include it in their portfolio for enterprise customers. Aeris is a Bridge Alliance CXO Forum 2024 Diamond sponsor and also a Bridge Alliance technology partner for IoT.

Ken: Welcome to ‘be’ in conversation. Hi, Jon. Could you tell us about yourself and what Aeris does please?

Jonathan: Thank you. It’s great to be here. My name is Jonathan Connet, and I’m Chief Product Officer at Aeris. For those of you who don’t know Aeris, we are a technology company that provides enterprise customers and service provider partners IoT software platforms that enable, secure and simplify global IoT deployments. At Aeris, we have over 7000 enterprise customers helping to cover their IoT needs across 80 million devices in 190 countries around the world.

Our IoT ecosystem is supported by 30 major international mobile network carriers. We are headquartered in San Jose, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. And we have a global footprint of nine offices spread across North America, Europe and Asia. At Aeris, our focus is all on IoT. And that focus allows us to ensure that we can deliver the very best experience for our customers and partners globally, regardless of whether they’re serving utilities, transportation, logistics or the automotive sector.

 

Ken: Could you tell us a little bit about Aeris’s IoT security solutions to safeguard connected devices?

Jonathan: Absolutely. So we have a new product that we’re coming to market with called IoT Watchtower. IoT Watchtower consists of two major components. The first, we call Awareness, which is all about providing real-time visibility into your cellular IoT connected devices. As part of this offering, we provide you real-time insight into what your devices are doing, their posture state, who and what those devices are connecting to, and what their posture state is for the purpose of understanding their threat posture and threat risk, as well as whether or not they’re being actively exploited as part of a cyber attack.

The second component of our offering, which we call IoT Watchtower Enforcement, gives the enterprise customer the ability to, in real-time, enforce policy that allows them to block, segment, or limit their IoT devices heterogeneously across carrier partners.

Combined, these two solutions we believe gives the enterprise customer a cohesive and uniform way to control and manage the risk of their IoT environment, regardless of the network provider or the region of the world that they’re deploying in.

 

Ken: So how do you differentiate Aeris’s security solution from the competition?

Jonathan: Great question. So in Aeris, not only do we provide a world-class connectivity management platform, but we also provide a cellular core network. And this network of networks, which is enabled by our integrations into all of our 30 plus carrier partners worldwide, allows us to deliver a uniform set of services for the enterprise customer.

And from a connectivity standpoint, you know, this can mean a single set of APIs, a single pane of glass to manage their global deployments, a single set of SLAs and of course, if we’re a device manufacturer, a single skew to build and deploy their device regardless of the carrier partner of their choosing.

When it comes to security, what this means is that we can deliver our cybersecurity services in a uniform and consistent way across carrier networks. And what this does is it allows customers to really set one set of policies that will apply to all of their devices globally. The alternative to this, would essentially be to have separate security solutions that only work on specific carrier operators.

So if you’re a global automotive, for example, doing business in dozens of countries around the world, you might have to have potentially dozens of different security services to manage each of those deployments in every country and across every operator. The other alternative is potentially having to use an over-the-top service from a traditional cybersecurity offering. This usually means having to pay for excessive transport and bandwidth costs for moving data to those third party over-the-top security services, which can drastically increase the cost of serve and thus, limit the ability for the enterprise customer to deploy security solutions in their IoT environment.

We believe that this cost advantage in this deployment advantage sets us apart in the market for cybersecurity solutions.

 

Ken: What is the value to your carrier partners in adopting and launching Watchtower?

Jonathan: Yes great question. So of course, we believe that Watchtower solves a real customer pain point. We believe that this is a pain point that is only going to become more important and more critical as cellular IoT continues to proliferate across the world. And as the IoT devices connected to cellular networks becomes increasingly sophisticated, such as in the case of a connected car.

These types of devices are increasingly the focus for attack for many malicious actors. According to a recent Forrester publication, over 40% of cyber attacks actually originate from IoT devices. And the reason for that is that these devices have historically been not an area of focus for security. And like any good engineer, a lot of these malicious attackers are following the path of least resistance and going after these IoT devices as easy ways to enter the enterprise ecosystem.

What this means for our carrier partners is that this is a real pain point and a real problem to enterprise customers needs to solve today. And so at Aeris, we are a channel-first company and we believe in bringing valuable, compelling, high-margin value-added services to our carrier partners to help create new monetization patterns. And because we believe that this is a real pain point, and because we believe we have a compelling, differentiated offer, we believe that by bringing this offering to our carrier partner community, it gives them a new offering in their portfolio that they can sell on to their enterprise customers. They can drive meaningful new revenue for their businesses.

 

Ken: Is Watchtower available today and how will you be launching Watchtower in Asia?

Jonathan: Great question. So Watchtower is available today, but because Watchtower relies on the Aeris core network, we are rolling it out into all of our points of presence globally around the world in a gradual process. This process is happening in two phases – the first is with the IoT Watchtower Awareness package. That process is already started and by the end of this year, we plan to have a significant percentage of our global network coverage covered by the IoT Awareness product.

And then starting in Q1 of next year, we will begin the rollout of IoT Watchtower Enforcement. We’re hoping that by the middle of 2025, we should have a complete global rollout, and all carrier partners fully enabled to deliver and sell IoT Watchtower. This will of course, be at no cost to our carrier partners.

This is something that Aeris is rolling out internally within our network. And so as soon as the local point of presence for the respective carrier partner is onboarded and activated, they will be enabled to sell Watchtower on to their end customers.

 

Ken: Thank you so much for your time and a very interesting conversation.

Jonathan: Great. Thank you very much.

Ken: That was Jonathan Connet, Chief Product Officer at Aeris Communications. Thank you for watching ‘be’ in conversation.