A private, community and security-focused Internet network technology called SCiON is about to be launched by Telindus and the Swiss operator Anapaya. The financial and healthcare sectors are its main targets.
Telindus, the B2B telecom and ICT operator, and Anapaya, a network software solutions provider, are launching the SCiON architecture in Luxembourg.
The former will offer the connectivity solution to its Luxembourg B2B customers, their suppliers, partners and own customers. The latter will provide the technology.
Developed by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH), SCiON (Scalability, Control, and Isolation On Next-Generation Networks) is designed as a private network based on a community of peers, both users and guarantors of its security.
“It combines the openness and flexibility of the Internet with the security and resiliency of a private network, thereby eliminating the risk of cyber-attacks on its users,” said Hugues Stiernon, Deputy Director, Head of Telecom Solution at Telindus. “It also offers the redundancy of a multi-operator network while maintaining the privacy of a single-operator private network. In addition to our encryption solutions, we will be able to offer this new, fully secure technology to our customers.”
“We have chosen to introduce this technology in Luxembourg, to bring the country on this global network already present in Switzerland, Asia and North America.”
Hugues Stiernon
A La Carte Delivery
Unlike the current Internet, the architecture provides route control, fault isolation and explicit trust information for end-to-end communication.
“Currently, when you send a data packet over the Internet, you don’t know the path that packet will take, or the intermediaries that will relay the transmission,” explains Hugues Stiernon. “The SCiON protocol will address this double issue: the sender chooses the trusted operators through which his data will transit. SCiON will then calculate the routing of this data.”
Users can thus parameterize their data transmission, and choose their network operators, based on criteria such as transmission speed or latency, or governance or the company’s sustainable approach, or even trust indicators and rankings.
For Hugues Stiernon, SCiON could be adopted by Luxembourg banks, among themselves and in their operations with the Luxembourg Central Bank. “321 financial institutions are mandated to use SCiON and many of these institutions operating in Luxembourg are potential Telindus customers,” he says.
“These are grand-ducal subsidiaries of Swiss banks, whose groups will eventually all be members of the Secure Swiss Finance Network (SSFN), the Swiss interbank network deployed by Anapaya in conjunction with the Swiss National Bank and SIX, a provider of digital services for the financial market.”
The Head of Telecom Solution also sees an opportunity for critical infrastructure, public sector, health and its actors: doctors, hospital infrastructures, health administrations can exchange medical data in full confidentiality and security.
“We have chosen to introduce this technology in Luxembourg, to bring the country on this global network already present in Switzerland, Asia and North America,” continues Hugues Stiernon.
In the Grand Duchy, Telindus will host and manage the POP, which will be connected to Paris and Frankfurt, to link other international destinations.
