Invigo, leading device and SIM management provider, has announced recently that it has received GSMA accreditation for its eSIM Manager solution. Telecom Review spoke to Fouad Ghoraieb, Managing Director at Invigo on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress 2019 to know more about how the company received the accreditation and why the eSIM Manager solution is important in the era of IoT.
Invigo Managing Partner explained the long and complex process the whole team had to go through to receive this high level security accreditation.
“eSIM provisioning has to be compliant with GSMA specifications. In order for us to be able to provide this service, the application and the hosting environment where the application will reside have to be also compliant, notably at the level of data security which is a key requirement in this field, because we are dealing with SIM card profiles,” he said.
To highlight the importance of security, Ghoraieb explained the difference between the traditional SIM card and the eSIM and why the latter has to be highly secure.
“In traditional SIM cards, vendors engrave the profiles in the CPUS of the SIM and then sends them to the operators that in turn have to put these SIM cards in a vault because they have to be in a secure environment. When talking about eSIM, the profiles are virtual so they need to reside in a secure data center that cannot be accessed easily. The access to the server where the profile resides has to be compliant with GSMA specifications that are very complex. The application has to reside also on the same server and has to encrypt the profiles and send them over the air to the embedded SIM that is being activated.
“Invigo had to comply with the GSMA specifications related to the security of data center and the eSIM solution. It needed investment, time and the know-how of engineers, and we were able to meet all three conditions. Nine months ago, we initiated the process. The GSMA sent auditors to monitor that everything is done by the book. We got the certification a month ago and we are very proud of Invigo team that did marvelous work and are very grateful to Cirrus datacenter, located in Lebanon, that we used during the whole process.”
Invigo is today the first company in the MENA region and the 5th worldwide, along with global leading SIM vendors, to receive the GSMA SAS-SM accreditation for its eSIM Manager Solution. In fact, the company realized the importance to keep pace with the technology trends and that is why, it decided to launch this solution now in order to address the needs of users that are looking to activate their eSIM slots.
Moreover, Fouad Ghoraieb noted that eSIM is highly crucial in the era of IoT because with the increase of wearables and M2M devices, any connected object will be easily connected through eSIM provisioning.
However, Invigo doesn’t only offer eSIM solutions but rather has a very wide portfolio that revolves around remote configuration and provisioning.
“We offer device management and SIM management. As a technology company, the natural evolution for us is to go into eSIM provisioning and IoT. We are affirming the fact that we are an important player in that field. Hopefully, we will expand the market for Invigo and every customer in need of activating eSIM on its network”, he concluded.