Security. It's a check box on the requirement sheet for just about every product or service you want to name, these days. It says a great deal about the state of anxiety in our industry that there is a vibrant market for services and products that deal specifically with security even when all those other products have security in their brief. But none of the products or services will be effective unless they're used in the service of a sound security strategy.

The six finalists in this category are wildly diverse in the strategies they present. They are just as diverse in the particular aspect of security they address, from security management and advanced persistent threats to the Internet of Things (IoT).

The winners for all of the Leading Lights categories will be announced at the Leading Lights Awards Dinner on Monday, May 15, at Brazos Hall in Austin, Texas. The following day marks the start of this year's Big Communications Event.

To find out which companies were shortlisted in all of this year's Leading Lights categories, see Leading Lights 2017: The Finalists.

Don't get left in the dark by a DDoS attack – learn best practices to strengthen the security of your network.  Join us in Austin at the fourth annual Big Communications Event. BCE brings you face-to-face with hundreds of speakers and thousands of industry thought leaders. There's still time to register and communications service providers get in free.

CenturyLink – CenturyLink Managed Security Services Suite
One of the biggest problems in security management is dealing with the sheer volume of data produced by monitoring and fighting the bad guys. CenturyLink's Managed Security Services Suite addresses the problem by providing organizations with integrated security monitoring and analysis services. The new service is delivered over a CenturyLink-built security platform that leverages both traditional security information and event management (SIEM) technologies, a proprietary big data platform and customized tools.

The platform can be integrated with customers' existing security infrastructure in flexible hybrid deployments that can mix on-premises capabilities with hosted, multi-tenant services. Customers get complete transparency into CenturyLink Inc. (NYSE: CTL) SOC activity through the portal, so they can trust but verify the service they are receiving from CenturyLink. They can see in real time tickets being opened, worked, closed, so they can verify activity and collaborate with the provider when they wish to do so.

Cisco – Threat-Centric Security Solutions for Service Providers
Cisco Threat-Centric Security Solutions for Service Providers works across an architecture to deliver effective security that is simple, open and automated. Network and context information is automated through shared telemetry and cloud-processing to lower the time to detect and respond to attacks. With this, Threat-Centric Security Solutions for Service Providers has lowered the time to detection from a median of 14 hours in early 2016 to as low as six hours.

Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO)'s security approach for service providers provides full visibility and control so threats are identified, contained and remediated across every device on the network, the network itself and the cloud. Cisco's Open Network Architecture consists of key functional layers -- Infrastructure, Network Abstraction, Cloud and Service Creation -- that work together with security, policy, and analytics to provide detection and protection.

CSPi – CSPi SDS platform
Increasing levels of virtualization can mean increasing levels of frustration for security teams. CSPi's SDS helps keep virtual data and platforms secure by immediately securing each instance as it is spawned. The appropriate security policies are automatically assigned requiring little, or no, manual intervention. SDS protects virtualized or virtual-hosted data no matter where it is stored, how it is accessed or used.

CSPi 's SDS platform is the industry's first solution that can secure containers and/or VMs as they spawn. SDS-applied security policies control the services each container/VM can access and how the container itself is secured, as well as how the data it is accessing is protected. Each instance can support a broad set of security services including but not limited to authentication, tokenization, and firewalls applied in bulk or per application.

Mocana – Mocana IoT Security Platform
The IoT is in the news, in the long-range plans of process engineers from nearly every industry, and in the sights of hackers because it is, in the main, wide open to intrusion and hacking. Mocana's IoT Security Platform serves to make the IoT as secure as traditional IT. Using standards-based protocols, Mocana Corp. IoT Security Platform integrates military-grade cybersecurity software into industrial control systems, controllers, programmable logic controllers, cloud platforms and IoT devices. The Mocana IoT Security Platform provides new software capabilities, a set of simple APIs, and a path to integrate future updates.

Mocana software uses standard certificate management protocols and X.509 certificates during device enrollment to provide each IoT device a unique and signed identity. Mocana's IoT Security Platform also uses trust chaining to ensure the boot process, firmware, OS and applications maintain untampered-with integrity.

Nokia – Nokia Deepfield Defender
The combination of IoT and cloud infrastructure has provided opportunities for DDoS attackers alongside those for legitimate users. To prevent IoT recruitment into DDoS botnets, Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) has introduced Deepfield Defender. The Deepfield all-software solution provides fast, precise and scalable DDoS detection/mitigation. It combines network telemetry with a unique and patented global cloud/IoT awareness -- in real time -- so that service providers get the visibility they need to quickly detect attacks before they impact customers.

Deepfield leverages Cloud Genome technology to quickly identify attack sources. Cloud Genome unravels the supply chains of cloud services and uses this data to identify each IP flow entering your network. This information is used to quickly identify the IP addresses of all attacking IoT devices and cloud servers. Deepfield uses this information to program routers to stop DDoS faster and more cost-effectively. It leverages big data analytics to identify whether or not a traffic surge is actually an attack in seconds and removes the bulk of traffic from the scrubbing path to contain costs as DDoS and network traffic levels surge.

Wedge Networks, Inc. – Wedge Networks' Democratization of Advanced Threat Prevention
DDoS attacks and personal information theft are huge stories in the media, but malware -- including ransomware, spyware, and viruses -- are still wreaking havoc on companies around the world. Wedge Networks Advanced Malware Blocker (WedgeAMB) integrates multiple conventional state-of-the-art security technologies with new AI technology from Cylance to prevent the successful use of malware. WedgeAMB also uses a layered approach to block previously known viruses and malware.

WedgeAMB is available in virtual machine (VM) and physical appliance versions supporting as well as in a security-as-a-service (SECaaS) software platform. Wedge Networks believes that blocking threats before they enter the network reduces the potential for a breach, particularly for devices such as IoT and BYOD. It also eliminates the massive disruption of business processes, lost productivity, ransom payouts, and potential lost revenues that happen when ransomware and other malware penetrate networks.

— Curtis Franklin, Security Editor, Light Reading. Follow him on Twitter @kg4gwa.