The Telecom Sector's Contribution to Europe's Security and Resilience

Preface

Telecom networks provide key infrastructure, enabling everything from daily communications to business operations and government services.

With digital dependency deepening across Europe, and in the context of an evolving risk landscape, the security and resilience of telecom networks has never been more important. Despite the importance of this topic, there are few studies that cover security and resilience in the context of telecom networks.

Against this backdrop, Connect Europe commissioned Copenhagen Economics to develop a study explaining the importance of security and resilience to end-users and society at large, as well as the specific measures that telecom operators implement to ensure security and resilience. Furthermore, the study explores which actions policymakers should consider to ensure continued security and resilience.

The study is based on comprehensive desk research as well as interviews with security professionals at seven European telecom operators — Deutsche Telekom, KPN, Orange, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telenor, and United Group — and two vendors — Ericsson and Nokia.

For simplicity, the study treats European telecom operators as a broad category, despite differences in size, market position, and business models. While it does not segment operators by type, the goal is to cover security and resilience efforts that are common across the sector.

This study also focuses specifically on network operators’ security and resilience measures and does not consider measures taken elsewhere in the communication service value chain. However, it is important to acknowledge that security and resilience challenges extend well beyond telecom networks alone, encompassing interconnected systems across all layers of the value chain — such as downstream cloud infrastructure and end-user devices.