It would be a real shame if only select products could benefit from a well-functioning development project, and this is especially true for security solutions, and in particular for critical services such as mobile networks and the underlying infrastructure. That's why Ericsson is building its products on top of a component-based architecture which makes the various functional and security components used in those services available to a number of other products in the company's portfolio and to their development teams.
Customizing components on demand
This microservice-based architecture has a number of advantages, especially for cloud-native applications, perhaps the most obvious of which is that if a security solution or another feature is used by multiple products, it does not need to be re-developed through multiple iterations, and there is no need to maintain separate set of codes providing essentially the same functionality. Instead, the various emerging needs are communicated to the company's component development team that can align the microservices to the general product requirements of Ericsson and even to special requirements, should such demand arise in an area they handle. The developed components can then be used in many products and services.
Ericsson's Component Development Unit (CDU) addresses diverse requirements with its microservices, including service monitoring and lifecycle management, as well as security, which together form the company’s Application Development Platform (ADP).
The latter also includes an internal "marketplace" where developers can access existing components that can be used for the products being made. If, for some reason, a microservice does not provide a specific functionality for a project, its development team will contact the CDU and together they will develop the needed requirement in the component in question as needed. In most cases, the extra features are added without any further changes to the microservice in question, making them available to all development teams within the company.
Special mention should be made of the development of a component enabling support for SIP-TLS based communication, which is developed by Ericsson's CDU team of about 80 people in Hungary - the microservice is now managed by a dedicated development team of seven people. The SIP-TLS component is used in many Ericsson products, such as the well-known Expert Analytics, which imports it fully, but the domestic-developed Packet Core Controller and Gateway and Ericsson Cloud Manager also rely on it. With SIP-TLS encryption, communication inside and outside the application can be secured.
Strict internal and external monitoring
The team monitors the status of components that have already gone live, through feedback loops, in which security checks are performed using a number of tools, looking for known or just emerging vulnerabilities. But not only the microservices created, the tools used for development themselves go through rigorous controls, and only those that have passed the company’s audit can be used live. The company also maintains a list of already approved software applications, sorting them into different functionalities, from which developers can select tools for the tasks at hand as required.
It can also be seen from the above that potential vulnerabilities could pose a risk not only to in-house development but they can also come from potential third-party components; in order to minimize such vulnerabilities, Ericsson maintains a close relationship with the communities responsible for the external products it uses, and also allocates people to them, even from its own resources, to provide help with critical development projects.
Thus, the component-based structure has many advantages, but at the same time it is also vital that the delivery of any security updates, fixes, patches should be as fast and smooth as possible. The CDU is in a particularly fortunate position here, as for ADP, the team was able to build their own CI (Continuous Integration) system from scratch, completely tailored to their own needs, without having to adapt to a legacy infrastructure. This provides startup-like flexibility despite the company’s size, which, combined with the microservice-based architecture, makes development extremely streamlined.
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