SCION & B2B networking: Public vs Private networks

Business-to-Business (B2B) communication in a globalised world

In Switzerland, nearly half of the revenue of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) comes from foreign markets. While open economies offer chances for companies to enter new markets and increase profits, they also pose novel challenges to efficient and secure communication in today’s highly digital landscape, especially in terms of data security. A company can use a private network to share information within its own enterprise. Yet, in order to share information with business partners outside, a company usually needs to connect to a public network.  

In the automotive industry, for instance, only 40-60 per cent of the parts are produced by the automobile manufacturers themselves. For the remaining parts, automobile  companies rely on parts manufacturers and subcontractors from across the globe. The German car producer BMW has more than 3000 suppliers from all over world. The sheer size of this network makes secure and efficient communication across different sites extremely complex. 

The use of private networks in B2B 

It is hard to imagine business operations without Internet use in today’s world. Yet, the Internet’s infrastructure as a public network relying on BGP routing has several downsides in terms of security breaches and efficient data transmission.  

In consequence, many companies rely on private networks rather than public ones for B2B communication to counteract cyber threats. In particular, the use of Virtual Private Networks (VPN) with Multi-protocol Label Switching (MPLS) has become a prominent business solution. Using MPLS has several advantages from a business perspective:  

• MPLS uses a private infrastructure and is independent from IP routing. It is therefore exempt from security breaches specific to the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) and in turn typically considered as a secure way to transmit data. 
• MPLS provides predictable performance which can be important for voice over IP (VoIP) or video conferencing.
• MPLS is only targeted at B2B customers. In consequence, Service Providers have built a resilient core infrastructure, offering robust Service Level Agreement (SLA) specifically tailored to needs of B2B communication.  

So why should businesses still hold onto public networks? 

While MPLS offers several advantages when it comes to protecting networks against security threats, as well as in terms of efficiency, speed, and robustness, there are several shortcomings from a business perspective. Even though MPLS isolates customers from each other using Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF), it does not offer any inherent data protection of sensitive information. Furthermore, as MPLS VPN is a private network, it is by definition not pervasive. When using MPLS VPN, a company can only connect to other locations that are in the reach of their Service Provider. Connecting to companies via other Service Providers can be a tedious and cost-intensive task:

• The exact cost of MPLS circuits is hard to determine, especially as there are huge disparities across different locations. The average cost for a typical 1 Gbps circuit in North America costs USD 1,439 per month. 
• This makes the use of MPLS far more expensive than sending traffic over the public Internet. 
• It may be difficult to find an MPLS provider with global coverage. In order to expand their networks, MPLS providers often build partnerships with other service providers which, again, increases costs. Especially for businesses with a global reach this may significantly increase the cost of connectivity.  

Let’s reconsider the example of BMW: in order to communicate with all 3000 subcontractors through a private network, all of them need an MPLS access point from the same supplier as BMW. Those subcontractors, in turn, may also work for Peugeot or Nissan, who probably use a different MPLS supplier. In consequence, every subcontractor needs to install multiple private connections from different MPLS providers. Both from an operational and a financial perspective this approach is therefore not efficient.  

Public vs private networks: the use of next-generation internet 

Current shortcomings in both private and public network use confront many businesses with a dilemma: either use public networks and face several downsides in terms of network security (including cloud security), reliability, and performance or use robust private networks at a high cost and lower flexibility. 

The use of the SCION (Scalability, Control and Isolation On next-generation Networks) next generation technology is a viable solution to this dilemma. Compared to other security solutions, networks built on SCION, which is offered by more and more service providers, are: 

• Public, and thus allow any connected location to share data with another, even if they are connected through different service providers.
• Secure, as for example immune to security breaches related to BGP hijacking, thanks to the cryptographical protection of the path. Overall, SCION helps improve your security posture while protecting your business against network-based attacks.
• Reliable and robust, due to SCION’s multi-pathing properties that grant its users full control over the routing process and therefore offers real end-to-end control about where sensitive data goes and how it gets there.
• Performant, as customers can chose the path on a per application basis, depending on their needs: lower latency, higher throughput, or stable jitter amongst other. 

Even when following best practices and leveraging threat intelligence, organizations using traditional Internet-based public networks remain exposed to a massive attack surface where a single breach can expose valuable business information, disrupt operations, and damage customer trust. SCION technology takes a different approach by reducing the network attack surface and giving organizations explicit control over how their traffic is routed.

In a nutshell, SCION offers features  that help organizations protect customer data and reduce the risk of data breaches while supporting B2B communication tailored to an individual company’s needs at lower costs and without compromising security.  

Sources 

Baldegger, R. J., Merkle, R. J. & Wild, P. (2019): Swiss International Entrepreneurship Survey (SIES) 2019: Studienergebnisse zum Internationalisierungsverhalten  von Schweizer KMU, available online: https://www.s-ge.com/de/publication/analyse/20194-c1-ergebnisse-sies-studie  

Dunne, Erin (2019): Debate: Wide Area Networking: As the Technology and Players Mature, What’s Happening with SD-WAN and MPLS?, available online: https://www.verticalsystems.com/2019/10/22/debate-wide-area-networking-as-the-technology-and-players-mature-whats-happening-with-sd-wan-and-mpls/ (29.01.2020). 

Pathan, M., et al. (2013). Internet and Distributed Computing Systems: 6th International Conference, IDCS 2013, Hangzhou, China, October 28-30, 2013, Proceedings, Springer Berlin Heidelberg.  

Rathnam, Lavanya (2019): MPLS networking technologies. Everything you need to know, available online: http://techgenix.com/mpls-networking-technologies/ (29.01.2020). 

Rouse, Margaret (2019): Multiprotocol Label Switiching (MPLS), available online: https://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/definition/Multiprotocol-Label-Switching-MPLS (29.01.2020). 

Tsuji, M., et al. (2007). Industrial Agglomeration and New Technologies: A Global Perspective, Edward Elgar. 

Weinberg, Neal & Johnson, Johna Till (2018): MPLS explained, available online: https://www.networkworld.com/article/2297171/network-security-mpls-explained.html (29.01.2020)