Next to winner Integer, three more parties participated in the Telecom Insights Innovation Awards: Scion, Multibel and Phonecam.
SCION is a next-generation routing architecture that fundamentally redesigns how data is routed across networks. Unlike the current internet, which relies on outdated routing protocols (such as BGP) that automatically determine data paths, SCION enables organisations to explicitly choose, control and verify the route their data takes from point A to B. It introduces a secure-by-design infrastructure with cryptographic path validation, multi-path routing, and full visibility into data flows. This allows organisations to build highly secure, resilient, and sovereign network connections across different providers, countries, and cloud environments.
SCION: redesigning network security
Standard Internet connections carry hidden vulnerabilities that put data and business continuity at risk, and critical infrastructure operators have historically responded either by paying for costly dedicated lines or bolting cybersecurity onto the application layer — yet attacks keep rising (now accelerated by the weaponisation of AI). SCION addresses this at the network layer itself. The technology reduces the impact of cyberattacks across the board by reducing the network attack surface and giving organisations control over the way their traffic is routed. Networks built on SCION technology also provide full visibility of the supply chain, which significantly reduces the entry points into the network.
SCION not only provides benefits in terms of cybersecurity, it also ensures higher cyber resilience with its multi-path capability: if a path fails, data is redirected in a matter of subseconds to another one, and introduces choice at the network layer, a concept called optionality. Users have the option to choose who is part of the network and the path through which their data passes. Having this choice means satisfying requirements such as network sovereignty and performance.
Unlike other solutions, SCION networks are built by a federation of ISPs, reducing concentration risk and increasing availability. This helps organisations comply with regulations such as DORA and NIS2.
How SCION technology works
Four capabilities define the technology. First, SCION provides robust security through cryptographic techniques and secure routing protocols that protect data integrity and confidentiality against various forms of attack. Second, it offers high reliability by using optimal transmission paths, and can send data over multiple paths at once, boosting availability and performance while reducing the risk of network failure. Third, it hands back data sovereignty and control, letting users decide how and where their data is routed, so they can meet data protection rules and keep sensitive information under their own jurisdiction. Fourth, its trust-centric design offers transparent governance, which benefits industries and ecosystems that require stronger trust and data governance even while data is in transit.
Unlike SD-WAN, which only optimises the "last mile" within a single vendor's network domain, SCION allows full end-to-end path customisation across multiple ISPs and vendors, reacting to failures or degradation anywhere along the route and offering geofencing and built-in resistance to path hijacking that SD-WAN over the ordinary Internet cannot provide. Compared with a private leased line, SCION delivers similar security and availability while behaving like the Internet — connectivity comes from multiple providers, so there is no single point of failure, and native multipath support lets it outperform a fixed-path private circuit.
Businesses and ISPs alike can benefit from SCION’s technology
SCION organises its audience into three main paths. Businesses, Internet service providers, and developers can each find resources tailored to how they would use SCION technology. Enterprises and public bodies running critical infrastructure adopt SCION to protect their networks and meet regulatory demands; ISPs use it to differentiate their commercial offering, since SCION lets them revolutionise their solutions with enhanced security and reliability for both themselves and their customers, setting their offerings apart in the market; and developers engage through open-source resources that let them build, innovate, and contribute to the global SCION open-source community.
Within the business world, the sharpest fit is with sectors where data sensitivity, regulation, and uptime all matter at once: finance (secure inter-bank messaging, cross-border transactions, and real-time payments), healthcare (patient data exchange and telemedicine), energy and power grids (protecting legacy SCADA systems), aviation, government, and research and education networks. Beyond these regulated sectors, SCION is also being applied to securing home-office VPN access, protecting blockchain nodes from eclipse attacks, and providing low-latency in competitive online gaming.
More secure and controllable, without the need for a full private network
Organisations adopting SCION gain a network that is simultaneously more secure, more resilient, and more scalable than other Internet-based solutions or private and isolated lines — without the price tag of a fully dedicated private network. A recent SCION Association white paper demonstrates that, based on a use-case-centric analysis, SCION delivers a strong return on investment and is more cost-effective than alternatives such as MPLS and SD-WAN, while also providing strategic business advantages. Because SCION traffic can move across multiple independent paths and providers simultaneously, an outage, congestion event, or attack on one path doesn't take the connection down — traffic simply shifts to another route, maintaining business continuity. For regulated industries, the ability to specify exactly which geographic or jurisdictional paths data may travel through also makes compliance with data-protection and data-sovereignty rules far more straightforward.
Two real-world deployments illustrate how this plays out. In Switzerland's financial sector, the Secure Swiss Finance Network (SSFN) runs on SCION to give banks and financial institutions a resilient, trusted way to exchange sensitive data, reinforcing the security and compliance guarantees the industry needs for interbank communication and payments. This network has been operational since 2022 and processes up to 220 billion Swiss francs daily. Separately, the Swiss National Bank has deployed SCION technology to secure the network connections of its remote and home-office workers — addressing a common weak point in corporate security, since conventional VPNs are frequently the very entry point attackers use to compromise a corporate network, and reducing that exposure to intrusion and denial-of-service attacks.
Adopting SCION doesn't require building an entirely new network from scratch. Organisations typically define their connectivity needs and topology, then obtain SCION connectivity from one of a growing roster of ISPs and infrastructure partners already offering it — including Swisscom, Sunrise Business, BICS, Digital Realty, Cyberlink and others — often via SCION-IP gateways that make it compatible with existing IP-based applications. For organisations already connected to a SCION-enabled provider, integration can happen within days, making the transition from evaluation to a functioning secure network relatively fast for a technology that fundamentally rethinks how the Internet routes trust.
