Securing the network is a top priority for telcos and carriers as LTE becomes increasingly mainstream across Africa, says Fortinet.

Perry Hutton, regional director of Fortinet for Africa, says: "LTE is changing the playing field. The previous generation of mobile technologies relied on mobile operators' proprietary infrastructures, so security was not a major concern. They were less susceptible to hacking and attack. But with LTE, the traffic uses IP as a transport method, which essentially puts it in the public domain where it is extremely vulnerable."

While a relatively small percentage of operators in Africa are using LTE right now, major players have started the ball rolling in many regions. "Unless some new technology comes along to bypass LTE, we see it becoming mainstream in Africa over the next few years," says Hutton.

Fortinet's SE Manager Tinus van Rensburg concurs saying that from an operational point of view, the focus is not only to get LTE up and running, but to ensure that it is secure. "Many operators are focused on the volume of customers and revenue...but security of the network is a main consideration."

He added that service providers in Africa have become innovative in their approach to LTE, bypassing 2.5G and 3G and moving directly onto LTE and using co-agreements with government to initiate projects.

One of the challenges is the ability of service providers to work with multiple operators.

Hutton says for many operators, LTE is almost uncharted territory, but they are well aware of the potential risks. "So when they start looking to LTE, security is one of their top concerns. With tens of thousands of customers' traffic on the network, they can't take risks."

At the same time, the security solutions in place cannot be allowed to degrade network performance. "People are moving to LTE because 3G was too slow for them. So performance is crucial – any security solution must have as little latency as possible," he explains.