What is our primary use case?
In our Ericsson charging environment, my main use case for Enigma Vault handles large volumes of sensitive telecom information such as subscriber personal data, different IMSI and MSISDN addresses, billing information, CDRs, network logs, and SIM related information. Enigma Vault can tokenize or encrypt all sensitive information before it is stored in databases, particularly the PostgreSQL database we use. The data is generally shared with third party systems or used in analytics platforms. The biggest advantage is that even if databases or logs are exposed, attackers only see tokens instead of real customer data. Our organization's key use cases include protecting customer PII data, securing the telecom billing system, and enabling secure data sharing. Cloud security is one of the most important points here. Centralized key management, where encryption keys are managed securely across multiple applications and telecom platforms, is one of the key roles played by Enigma Vault.
Regarding daily workflow, the following workflows are encountered in day to day operations. When a customer calls support regarding a billing issue, the CRM application retrieves the customer data. Sensitive fields such as MSISDN and IMSI or payment related data remain tokenized and masked. Customer support agents can only see partially masked values such as 9XXXXX, and instead of the full mobile number, they only see XX digits. Only authorized systems and privileged users can de-tokenize the original value when it is required. Another daily example is our analysis of telecom traffic and customer usage patterns at Ericsson. Instead of exposing real subscriber identities, Enigma Vault provides tokenized data. Analysts can still perform reporting and trend analysis without accessing customer PII. We can extract all that data without touching production. We also use Enigma Vault in cloud environments in container based NTP. Before sending logs or telecom data sets to cloud storage or SIEM tools, sensitive information is encrypted and tokenized through Enigma Vault.
How has it helped my organization?
Enigma Vault has positively impacted our organization in several ways, especially in improving data security, compliance, and operational trust within Ericsson systems. There are some key points I want to emphasize. Improved protection of sensitive data is one of them. Customer information such as MSISDN, billing data, and CDRs are now tokenized and encrypted, which significantly reduces the risk of exposing sensitive telecom data. Better compliance management is one of the key tools here because Enigma Vault helps strengthen compliance with GDPR and internal telecom security policies. Safer cloud adoption is one of the key points as well.
While exact numbers are usually confidential, we observed several measurable improvements after implementing Enigma Vault in our Ericsson environment, particularly in the charging domain. One point is the reduction of sensitive data exposure. A large percentage of customer PII fields stored in databases and logs became tokenized or masked, which significantly reduced the number of systems directly handling raw subscriber data. Faster compliance audits is another point. GDPR and security audit preparations became easier because Enigma Vault provided centralized logging, access tracking, and key management. Audit evidence collection time was also reduced. Lower security risks is a key important point. Since supported analytic streams worked mostly with tokenized data, insider exposure risk decreased. Even if logs or databases were accessed improperly, real customer data was not directly visible. Improved cloud security is one of the key points here.
What is most valuable?
The best features of Enigma Vault for our organization, Ericsson Telecom, are the tokenization and strong encryption. Tokenization replaces sensitive telecom and customer data with non-sensitive tokens, which reduces the risk of exposing real subscriber information. It is very useful for protecting IMSI, MSISDN, billing, and customer confidential identity data. Strong encryption supports secure encryption of data at rest and in transit, protecting sensitive information across SQL, PostgreSQL databases, APIs, cloud platforms, and backups. Encryption keys are managed securely from one centralized platform, which simplifies security operations across multiple telecom applications and environments.
All the features I have mentioned are important. However, if I need to emphasize a particular feature, the most important feature in my opinion is tokenization. The reason is that telecom organizations such as ours handle extremely sensitive customer information such as MSISDN, IMSI, SIM data, customer identity information, and CDRs. With tokenization, the actual sensitive data is replaced with non-sensitive tokens before being stored or shared with our applications. This is critically important because it reduces data exposure risk, supports compliance, and enables secure analytics, which results in minimizing incident threats.
What needs improvement?
Enigma Vault is a strong security platform within Ericsson, but there are always areas where it can be improved further. There are some gray areas, especially for large telecom environments. Some improvements I would suggest are simpler integration processes. Integration with legacy telecom applications can sometimes be complex. More ready-made connectors and automation for telecom systems would reduce deployment effort. Better performance optimization in high volume telecom environments is another suggestion. In Ericsson charging, tokenization and encryption can introduce latency. Further optimization for real-time workloads would be beneficial. Enhancing monitoring dashboards is also important. More advanced real-time dashboards and analytics for security events, token usage, and compliance visibility would improve operational monitoring. AI-ML driven anomaly detection would help identify suspicious access patterns or insider threats faster. Broader multi-cloud automation can also be implemented here.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Enigma Vault for approximately four and a half years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Enigma Vault is very stable because we use it in different Ericsson charging domains such as SDP, AR, CCN, and CC.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of Enigma Vault is a key strength, especially in large scale telecom environments such as Ericsson charging where data volume and transaction rates are extremely high. Scalability works in our cases through horizontal scalability. Enigma Vault is designed to scale out by adding more instances rather than relying on a single powerful server. It processes requests through APIs, which makes it suitable for large scale distributed telecom systems. Multiple applications such as billing and CRM can call it simultaneously. Telecom environments generate massive data streams such as CDRs, subscriber updates, and network logs. This platform is built to process high transaction volumes with low latency, which is very critical for real-time operations. Even if telecom traffic increases dramatically with millions of subscribers generating continuous data, Enigma Vault can handle the load by scaling horizontally and distributing requests efficiently without degrading any system performance.
How are customer service and support?
Customer support for Enigma Vault is generally structured as an enterprise grade support model, which is important for large telecom environments such as Ericsson charging where downtime or security issues are critical. Twenty-four hour per day, seven day per week enterprise support is available. Support is typically available around the clock, which is essential for telecom operations that run globally and cannot afford downtime. An L1, L2, and L3 tier support model is in place. A dedicated technical account manager is also managing the shift rota level engineer where we are working as a last level of engineer for T2 cases during emergency and DFD cases. The support is very strong here. Since Enigma Vault deals with sensitive data protection, support interactions follow strict security protocols. Enigma Vault provides enterprise grade twenty-four hour per day, seven day per week support with tiered escalation, SLA based response times, and dedicated technical account managers, which ensure reliable operation in critical telecom environments such as Ericsson charging.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
In our Ericsson environment, before adopting Enigma Vault, we were using a combination of custom in-house encryption and tokenization logic and some database level security features such as TDE encryption and application level masking. This earlier solution was used because it was already built into legacy telecom applications, and database level encryption helped protect data at rest. However, we moved to Enigma Vault because the earlier approach had several limitations such as lack of centralized control, high maintenance effort, limited scalability, and weak standardization. Cloud readiness challenges were also a factor because legacy encryption approaches were not designed for hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Enigma Vault provided centralized tokenization and encryption, policy-based access control, scalable API driven integration, and consistent security across all applications, so we chose it.
Before adopting Enigma Vault in our Ericsson environment, there was typically an evolution of multiple data protection approaches and vendor solutions to ensure the right fit for telecom scale requirements. Services such as AWS KMS and Azure Key Vault were used for key management and encryption at rest. These were not strong enough alone for application level tokenization for telecom data. Enigma Vault was chosen because it provided centralized tokenization across multiple telecom systems and better performance for high volume CDR and subscriber data processing. Before Enigma Vault, we evaluated cloud-native encryption services, database level security such as TDE, and custom in-house tokenization approaches. However, Enigma Vault was selected because it provided centralized, scalable tokenization with better integration and compliance support for telecom workloads.
What was our ROI?
With Enigma Vault in our Ericsson charging environment, ROI is mainly visible in risk reduction, operational efficiency, and compliance cost savings rather than direct revenue. One point is the reduced data breach risk, which is a major ROI driver. Since sensitive data such as MSISDN and billing records are tokenized, the blast radius of any potential data exposure is significantly reduced. This helps avoid high cost incidents related to data breaches, fines, and customer churn. Faster compliance audits is another point. GDPR and internal security audits become faster because sensitive data handling is centralized and traceable, which reduces the manual effort from multiple teams and saves engineering and security hours during audit preparation. Reduced development overhead is another benefit. Instead of building custom encryption tokenization logic in every application, Enigma Vault provides a centralized service, which reduces duplicated development and maintenance effort across multiple telecom systems. Improved cloud security is another benefit. Enigma Vault reduced security barriers for moving telecom workloads to cloud environments by ensuring data is protected before leaving core systems. Enigma Vault is mainly seen as reducing breach risk exposure, enabling faster compliance audits, lowering development overhead due to centralized tokenization, and improving operational efficiency in secure data access across telecom systems.
What other advice do I have?
I chose a rating of nine out of ten because I deducted some points for the improvement areas, and I gave it nine out of ten for the positive responses and what it delivers to us in our day-to-day operations.
One additional point I can add is that Enigma Vault helps maintain compliance while still enabling monitoring and troubleshooting.
I would advise that others in an organization such as Ericsson apply Enigma Vault based on a few practical recommendations from real implementation experience. The first point is to start with a clear data classification strategy. Identify which data is sensitive and apply tokenization only where needed to avoid unnecessary complexity and overhead. The second point is to plan integration carefully and ensure early involvement of application, database, and security teams. I would suggest using a phased rollout approach consisting of a pilot, limited production, and full scale deployment to reduce risks. I would also focus on performance testing in telecom environments such as ours, where high transaction volumes are expected. Load testing for tokenization and de-tokenization APIs is critical before production rollouts. Role-based access control must be implemented strictly to ensure only authorized systems and users can de-tokenize sensitive data. My advice would be to start with proper data classification, carefully plan integration with all applications, and perform strong performance testing before production deployment.
In our Ericsson environment, the primary relationship with Enigma Vault is that of a technology vendor and enterprise customer relationship. Apart from being a customer, in most enterprise deployments there are usually additional interactions such as implementation and integration support, professional services engagement during rollout, ongoing technical support and SLA-based maintenance, and occasional roadmap discussions and product feedback sessions. The primary relationship is vendor-customer. Beyond that, there may be implementation support, professional services, and ongoing technical collaboration, but not a strategic co-development or ownership type partnership in most cases.
Enigma Vault is a key tool in today's telecom industry, and I have shared comprehensive information on it. I gave the product a rating of 9 out of 10 overall.