Meeting the Challenge of the EU Data Retention Directive

A new EU Data retention directive, designed to help law enforcement agencies fight crime and terrorism, is set to place a huge cost and technical burden on telecoms operators.

A mandatory compliance date has been set for a new European data retention directive ordering telecom operators and ISPs in Europe to save call detail records and information on Internet transactions such as emails. The directive is designed to help the police and intelligence services fight terrorism and organised crime. Telecoms operators and ISPs have voiced concerns about the financial burdens of storing and retrieving this data, as well as the issue of privacy. United as they are in their concerns, each will have to adopt ways of coping with their increased regulatory responsibility.

EU Data Retention Directive
Directive 2006/24/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council requires operators to store voice calls, voice mails, conference calls and text and data messages from their own network services. This includes information necessary to identify the source, date, time, type and destination of the call, the equipment used and in the case of mobile telephony the location of communications equipment. Supplementary services including call forwarding and call transfer and messaging and multi-media services also fall under the requirements. The data must be saved for a period of six months to two years and will be used by law enforcement agencies to understand the calling patterns of suspects. The directive’s requirements must be implemented by EU countries by September 15, 2007.

Impact on Operators
Many operators will need to step up their data retrieval and storage capabilities in order to effectively respond to data requests from national law authorities. The first issue is cost, as many service providers haven’t budgeted for this challenge. Whilst many might have the facilities to address the mandate, expanding conventional data management and storage capabilities typically proves to be a highly expensive approach. The second issue is storage, as each provider generates a massive amount of call detail records (CDRs) which is compounded with IP events. Multiply that over the maximum directive term of two years and this can equate to hundreds of terabytes of raw data per provider. In addition, systems for storage must be separated from other business and operational systems. The third issue is data retrieval, as providers must be able to extract meaningful information to law enforcement agencies without undue delay; that requires good tracking of usage events through the system, sound reformatting and processing and quality data flow to OSS/BSS, with effective error management; as well as extremely rapid analysis and retrieval of data. The fourth issue and by no means least is ensuring correct interpretation of the EU Directive regarding data specification, retention, accessibility and security controls and especially in accordance with different national laws.

To provide operators with a complete solution to these issues, that extend beyond conventional data storage and data management capabilities, Intec Telecom Systems, in partnership with EMC and SenSage, developed the Intec Data Retention Solution.

Author: Simon Dadswell, Advanced Solutions Marketing Manager, Intec.