As carriers deliver the triple play of voice video and data services over converged infrastructure, they will face a new set of security concerns. Those concerns were the focus of the “Security for the Rapidly Evolving Broadband Network” sponsored by the Alliance for Telecom Industry Solutions at NxtComm Wednesday.

Security vulnerabilities of personal computers are well known—and service providers delivering triple play services will need to find a way to isolate advanced video applications from those vulnerabilities.

The ability to police traffic on a per-flow basis could go a long way toward isolating problematic PC traffic, said Natasha Tamaskar, director of FMC technologies for security developer Reef Point—a capability she said will become increasingly important as wireless providers begin to divert traffic to a customer’s broadband connection when customers use their cellphones at home.

Another approach is what Peter Tosto, business line manager for telecom security solutions for IBM Security Systems, calls “sandboxing.” IBM and other companies currently are investigating various ideas for “sandbox” software that would run on the PC to filter out suspicious applications, Tosto said.

A range of standard efforts also could be part of the solution, said Sanjay Beri, senior director of product management for Juniper Networks. “A lot of work is going on about how can you assess a person coming onto the network,” Beri said. Service providers could enforce security policies based on that information, including policies that could restrict bandwidth for certain applications. The question then is whether customers will accept service providers playing that role.

Although Beri felt it might be appropriate for service providers to let customers handle their own security if they prefer to do so, another panelist had a different view. “What consumers want may not be what they need,” said William C. Bonti, corporate vice president and chief information security officer for Motorola Information Protection Services.

Panelists agreed, however, that another major concern was the protection of consumer databases, as service providers look to deliver increasingly personalized video services. “The flip side of personalization is giving away privacy,” said Carlos C. Salari, vice president of security solutions for Alcatel-Lucent’s Bell Laboratories unit. “We need to find the right balance.”