Colt Technology Services is launching SCION as a fully managed network service in Europe, North America, and Asia. Using technology from the Swiss company Anapaya, organizations can choose the route their data takes. Colt focuses on sectors with sensitive, regulated, or business-critical networks.
Colt is the first network provider to offer a fully managed SCION service across three continents. SCION stands for Scalability, Control, and Isolation on Next Generation Networks. The service is now commercially available, following a two-year proof of concept. During that period, Anapaya tested and validated the technology with several financial-sector organizations. These organizations are now using the solution to gain greater insight into their network traffic and to protect their critical data.
The main difference from a traditional WAN lies in the degree of control. A network based on the internet or IP provides only limited visibility into the path that data takes. With Colt SCION, customers can track how their data travels from end to end. They can also audit and enforce this. This should help with regulatory compliance and meeting data sovereignty requirements. Colt is targeting energy companies, the healthcare sector, government agencies, the defense sector, and financial institutions.
“Trust, resilience and control are non-negotiable for organisations handling critical data,” says Peter Coppens, VP of Product at Colt.
Private or global
Customers can choose between two options. Colt SCION Private connects organizations to existing private ecosystems and extranets. This option is intended for financial institutions that want to connect to existing private domains through partners. Colt SCION Global is a secure WAN for organizations that want to build their entire backbone infrastructure on it.
Anapaya CEO Martin Bosshardt highlights the external threat. “AI is enabling attackers to automate and scale increasingly sophisticated attacks, while the consequences of downtime for critical services are immediate,” says Bosshardt.
Tip: SCION aims to make the foundations of the internet more secure