Dr. Terje Jensen on AI, Collaboration, and 5G's Impact on Telecom

Your Professional Journey

Q: With over four decades of experience in telecommunications spanning operations, planning, strategy, and research, how has your journey evolved from your earlier roles to your current position as Senior Vice President and Global Business Security Officer at Telenor?

Starting in the field more than forty years ago, the technologies, services and business environments were rather different. However, digitalisation stands out as a common topic. The first phase was introduction digital transmission and switching system, moving on to digital mobile systems and support systems. Intelligent and centralized service control as well as digital broadband have also been part of the journey linked with the different generations of mobile and broadband access. Working with customers and partners has always been part of the scope. Over the last years 5G, cloud and industry 4.0 are fuelling another step of digitalising taking even a broader perspective on the value telecom can bring to the society.

Q: You've authored more than 200 publications throughout your career. How has your research background influenced your approach to telecommunications security and strategy in your executive role?

A scientific research background would bring the ability to structure complex area and define relevant questions to be addressed in an orderly manner. It is also central to leverage current knowledge in a transparent way. This is to build on what is available, define what is needed to be done and execute on the tasks to advance of the most important areas. This has to be done under uncertainty as several of the conditions are not known – and the level of uncertainty may be seen as increasing as the world is becoming more dynamic. Despite this, it is important to get started as more insights are gained during the executions. While executing it is key to adapt according what are the experiences gain from all the parties. In many cases also the customers gain insights giving new ideas on what their needs are and how they can make use of our services. In all this can be seen as an over-whelming task, although when taken step by step it becomes a motivation to bring us forward. Both strategy and security have elements of similar complexity spanning the total set of business – for the operators as well as their customers and partners.

Industry Insights

Q: In your role overseeing business security at Telenor, which encompasses everything from cyber threats to physical security, what do you see as the most significant emerging security challenges for telecommunications companies in 2025?

Business security spans cyber security, physical security, personal security and fraud. The more advanced attacks address several in a single case, making it important to see across all these areas. For example, cyber information from a social posting could be used to explore fraudulent pay-outs or exploited to lure log-in credentials. This is not only relevant for the telecom internal systems and processes, but also relevant for customers and partners. The general threat level drives the need for broad awareness in the organization and the societies – meaning bringing the understanding by everyone regarding what could go wrong and how to behave to reduce that risk. As this has been worked on for some time, more improvements can be targeted like recovering from ransomware attacks, reduce likelihood and impacts of insiders’ wrong-doings and same for third-parties. AI would be a natural tool to apply for identification, detection, responding and recovering. However, AI is also used by unfriendliers across all the security areas for hybrid attacks.

Q: During your time leading Telenor's 5G Readiness strategic program, you've gained insights across multiple markets. How do you see the relationship between 5G deployment and security evolving, particularly as private 5G networks become more prevalent?

The 5G strategy defined a two-track approach according to timely available capabilities from standard implementations and market readiness; One track can be referred to as mobile broadband where 5G brings higher speed, lower latency, more capacity and improved security compared to earlier generations. Typically, this can be done by most telecom companies without major changes of organization and way of work. The market readiness has also been observed as penetration of 5G-enabled devices have passed 70% five years after commercial launch in several countries. The other track can be referred to as new business opportunities building on offerings like private network, traffic isolation, seamless connectivity and first steps on network sensing. This often is linked with digitalising enterprises or public entities. The second track moves slower than the first track as planned, and also according to standardized capabilities and market readiness. Connecting more devices, integrating connectivity into mission- and business-critical processes, security is essential and also asked for – as seen by initiatives related to resilience and sovereignty for example.

Q: You've previously discussed how CSPs have unique strengths in network design and management. In your view, how is the balance shifting between traditional wireless LANs and private 5G in enterprise environments, and what security implications does this bring?

CSPs – or telcos – should have building, operating and optimizing networks as key competence. For the ones having been on market for a few decades, they have experience spanning across different technologies. And this also include securing devices and persons – and aligning their needs with optimal use of network resources. This spans across a number of operating environments meaning wide area, campus, in-building, etc. 5G seems to have triggered additional interests from enterprises and public entities as to be used for secure and resilient connectivity. One example is hospitals where a private network would be used to support mission-critical processes. This means to connect different devices supporting diagnostics, treatment and observation of patients. However, there are other communication needs such as robust connectivity between medial staff, supporting administrative processes, allowing patients and visitors to connect, etc. All these could be supported by the same physical network, although different traffic types should be managed differently – including isolation and prioritization.

Event Participation

Q: At Network X, you'll be joining industry leaders across tracks covering Fibre, Mobile, AI, Wi-Fi, Data Centres, and Optical. Which technological convergences across these domains are you most excited to discuss with your peers?

There are a couple of key opportunities such as what embedding AI into every system and process would allow, ensuring efficient delivery of secure and seamless experience across any network (fixed or mobile), what are concrete needs and steps for sovereign cloud and data centres.

It would also be good to get insight into the latest and greatest within each of the technology domains such as speeds supported, support for resilient solutions, support for automation and autonomous networks, as well as how are these solutions helping sustainability.

An event like Network X would allow for more concrete discussions on what are actually the status and the concrete activities – going deeper than what we can read about in the press.

Q: What key messages about telecommunications security do you hope attendees will take away from your participation at Network X?

A few of the key points for business security:

• Important to look at cyber security, physical security, personal security and fraud as attackers leverage multiple modes and there are significant synergies across these topics
• A 360-degree perspective has to be applied including threat insights, reactive/proactive processes and collaboration for scale
• The security threat landscape is dynamic and automated (AI) tools are needed to adequately support the assessment of different risk scenarios to prioritize the proper actions
• There are several tools in place to support the reactive (monitoring, incident, crisis) and reactive (policy, specification, maturity assessment, assurance). These must be organized as a portfolio allowing shared data
• Customers’ and partners’ perspectives have to be covered as many of the tools and capabilities do have value for them as well
• Awareness and embedding security into the systems are essential for scaling throughout the organization and into all functions