How Qualcomm Dragonwing Security and Management is designed to help broadband operators turn intelligence into subscriber value

What you should know:

• Dragonwing Security and Management (SAM) is an intelligent services suite built to combine device and service intelligence, experience optimization and cybersecurity to help operators understand, optimize and protect the broadband environment while creating opportunities for service innovation. 
• Dragonwing SAM builds on a broader Dragonwing broadband technology stack spanning connectivity, compute, software and intelligence, giving operators more ways to build on the gateway’s expanding role. 
• It's designed for deployment across Dragonwing networking infrastructure platforms and third-party silicon, helping enable operators to scale services across diverse broadband environments, with an established footprint of 10M+ gateway devices running Dragonwing SAM agents today. 

The broadband gateway is taking on a much bigger role. Fast, reliable, whole-home connectivity remains essential, but a growing share of broadband innovation and value is coming from the digital services and experiences delivered on top of it. Positioned at the center of the connected home, the gateway gives operators an opportunity to expand beyond connectivity, introduce a broader range of intelligent services and participate more directly in the value those services create.

Realizing that opportunity requires a shared intelligence foundation that can understand activity across the broadband environment and translate it into actionable services. Dragonwing Security and Management (SAM) is built to bring this approach to life through an intelligent services suite. Its capabilities are structured to span device and service intelligence, experience optimization and cybersecurity, helping operators support broadband experiences, subscriber trust and differentiated service offerings, while providing flexibility to support additional operator and ecosystem services over time. 

A silicon-to-cloud approach for the gateway

Broadband increasingly demands greater integration across the technology stack. The greatest opportunities come from bringing next-generation connectivity, high-performance compute, open software, advanced intelligence and services together rather than treating them as separate layers. Dragonwing networking infrastructure’s silicon-to-cloud approach is meant to span this broader broadband stack, connecting the technology powering the gateway with the intelligence and services built around it.

Dragonwing SAM aims to build on this silicon-to-cloud approach, helping turn broadband intelligence into differentiated services and subscriber value.

Understand. Optimize. Protect. Innovate.

At the heart of Dragonwing SAM is an edge-to-cloud intelligence framework. An agent on the gateway is engineered to observe device, service and network activity at the edge. Cloud-based intelligence enriches this information with context, insights and policies, which can then be applied through the gateway and integrated into operator systems and subscriber-facing services. This continuous flow of intelligence helps operators move from understanding the broadband environment to optimizing experiences, strengthening protection and introducing differentiated services.

• Understand: Build a richer picture of the broadband environment, including the devices, applications and services using the network and how they are being used.
• Optimize: Apply this understanding to network behavior and service performance to support broadband experiences and provide customer care and operations teams with additional context when issues arise.
• Protect: Extend security visibility and protection capabilities across the broadband environment, from the router and network to connected devices, applications and traffic.
• Innovate: Build on the same intelligence foundation to support new services and give operators and ecosystem partners more opportunities to differentiate their offerings over time.

Turning broadband visibility into broadband intelligence

Device ID is designed to answer a fundamental question: What is connected?

By identifying and classifying devices across the home, including IoT endpoints, it aims to give operators greater context into the environments they support.

Service ID is structured to add another dimension: What services are those devices using?

Application identification and classification help operators understand traffic patterns and service usage. Together, these capabilities provide additional visibility into broadband activity to support service-performance analysis, subscriber-experience initiatives and contextual troubleshooting

Cybersecurity is another core element of Dragonwing SAM. Leveraging intelligence generated across the gateway and cloud, Dragonwing SAM is built to combine threat detection, vulnerability mitigation and adaptive security controls to help protect connected devices, IoT environments and broadband traffic. Operators can package these security capabilities into offerings tailored to different subscriber needs, designed to help identify and mitigate threats such as malware, phishing, ransomware, credential attacks and other emerging risks. This flexible approach aims to support subscriber trust while creating new opportunities for service differentiation and value-added security offerings.

Built open and flexible for operator choice

Operators need the flexibility to innovate across the broadband infrastructure they have today while continuing to evolve their services over time. Dragonwing SAM sets out to address this need across diverse broadband platforms and gateway environments, giving operators greater choice in how services are introduced and scaled. 

Dragonwing SAM is built to work across Dragonwing networking infrastructure platforms and third-party silicon, support leading open middleware including RDK-B, prplOS and OpenWrt, and be deployed natively or in containerized environments. This helps operators scale services across a diverse installed base of broadband gateways rather than relying on a single platform approach.

Just as important, this intelligence is designed to be shared. Third-party ISVs and gateway applications can build on Dragonwing SAM, expanding the range of services and experiences that can be developed around the broadband platform.

Deployed at scale across 10M+ gateways

Today, Dragonwing SAM agents are deployed across more than 10 million gateway devices, including commercial deployments with Tier-1 operators across North America, Europe and Latin America. This installed footprint gives operators an established base for delivering intelligent services through broadband infrastructure already deployed in the home.

This established foundation is designed to support the next phase of intelligent broadband services and experiences. As digital services and experiences become a larger part of the broadband value proposition, Dragonwing SAM is designed to extend beyond its initial capabilities and support an expanding range of intelligent services and experiences.

As part of the broader Dragonwing networking infrastructure portfolio, it builds on a silicon-to-cloud technology stack spanning connectivity, compute, software and intelligence. Together, these capabilities aim to give operators more ways to extend the gateway’s role, shape the experiences delivered through broadband and participate more directly in the value they create.