CCAPS: New cybersecurity category that protects households and small businesses

We’re increasingly reliant on our networks to keep us working, entertained and connected to our loved ones. Networks ensure our kids get an education and have smart new toys to play with.

But it’s hard enough keeping your laptops and mobiles secure, without having to worry about cybercriminals targeting everyday objects such as your fridge, your baby monitor, your partner’s watch or even the family fishtank.

In fact, more and more households are struggling to protect their identity, privacy and personal data, as well as ensure their connected experience is as expected. This has created an opportunity for a new kind of cybersecurity service – Connected Customer Assurance & Protection Services (CCAPS).

CCAPS: Outlining the risks for households and small businesses

Omnisperience has published a paper that outlines the risks facing households, homeworkers and small businesses in today’s increasingly connected world.

The authors argue that these customers have been left behind when it comes to enjoying a safe connected experience, with lack of time, expertise and resources meaning they remain exposed to ever-more sophisticated cyberattacks.

“While large enterprises have the means to protect themselves, households and small businesses remain vulnerable, risking their own safety and security but also providing a back door that can be exploited and poorly secured devices that can be utilised in large-scale cyberattacks. It’s in everyone’s interest to fix this problem,” explains Teresa Cottam, Chief Analyst, Omnisperience.

This is a problem that a new type of cybersecurity service has evolved to solve. CCAPS eliminate the gaps between siloed security applications, remove customer effort, and provide unobtrusive but effective protection for all devices, connections, personal data and activities. Importantly, they also add performance assurance, to ensure connected experiences meet evolving customer expectations.

Delivering a critical new revenue stream to CSPs

CCAPS are a new type of value-added service provided by communications service providers (CSPs) that enhance the customer experience, add value to the core network offering and deliver a critical new revenue stream to CSPs.

Unlike many new CSP revenue streams that are currently being talked about by industry commentators, demand for CCAPS is proven, not theoretical. CCAPS address critical customer concerns and remove the burden of maintaining and securing household networks, data and devices. This makes them something that customers are prepared to pay for today.

In fact, CSPs that have launched initial CCAPS are seeing immediate uplifts to their ARPUs in the region of €1-2 per month. And with CCAPS set to become more sophisticated, research from Coleman Parkes suggests households are willing to pay even more – up to $5 per month. For a typical Tier 1 CSP this represents hundreds of millions of euros in much-needed and immediately-realisable new revenue.

“CCAPS are one of the low-hanging fruits for CSPs currently looking for new revenue streams,” says Cottam. “They’re vital both as a direct source of much-needed revenue, but also because they boost digital confidence, making them essential to the success of the digital economy.”