Fixed Mobile Convergence

Airvana and VeriSign say they are working to deploy device certificates for Airvana’s (News - Alert) HubBub UMTS Femtocell.

The certificates will be embedded into the HubBub UMTS femtocell. According to company officials, this will allow operators to authenticate these devices before allowing access to core networks and services.

Glenn Laxdal, vice president of femtocell product management at Airvana, said that both operators and subscribers must be confident that femtocell technology is highly secure in order to embrace it fully.

“Through our work with VeriSign (News - Alert) we are tackling one of the last implementation hurdles and will deliver to operators and subscribers femtocell technology that is backed by a recognized leader in security and authentication technology and services,” said Laxdal.

Device certificates are unique digital identifiers that are embedded into a device to enable strong authentication and encryption, for example a femtocell. Device certificates eliminate the need for passwords or any action from the end user by securely authenticating devices on the operator's network.

This enables network operators to ensure that only trusted devices are authorized to make connections. Moreover, rogue devices are identified and blocked from gaining access.

VeriSign and Airvana are working together to build on efforts currently taking place within the Femto Forum (News - Alert) and the 3GPP SA3 security standards group. Officials said that the efforts are taking place to establish an implementation standard for network authentication for femtocells using a certificate-based model.

The collaboration between the two companies will provide an authentication solution for operators deploying Airvana HubBub femtocells, said officials.

Additionally, the joint effort is expected to help drive authentication requirements for femtocells. This is expected to accelerate industry efforts toward a common approach that will facilitate large-scale, multi-vendor femtocell implementations.

“Collaborating with Airvana will once again allow VeriSign to implement security into a device-driven network at the earliest stages of development of a technology ecosystem,” said Adam Geller, vice president of PKI solutions at VeriSign.