Allot (News - Alert) Communications, an innovator in IP service optimization and revenue generation solutions based on deep packet inspection (DPI), recently announced the debut of the ServiceProtector 4.0, the first security product resulting from the January acquisition of Esphion Limited.
The ServiceProtector finds malicious traffic and isolates affected subscribers. This enables safe traffic to flow uninterrupted, at 10 Gbps speeds.
With malicious activities constantly on the rise, service providers are struggling to protect their infrastructures and service quality. Providers are mainly concerned with keeping their mail service off the domain blacklists and maintaining its legitimate standing.
According to Bill Mello, director of marketing for the Americas for Allot, ServiceProtector 4.0 is available as a standalone solution and will soon be available as a blade in Allot’s ServiceGateway. It is based on Allot’s ability to examine each individual packet in a 10 Gb/s stream at near-real-time and identify patterns of behavior that indicate problems.
Allot's ServiceProtector also reduces the operational and infrastructure costs involved in mitigation of such security threats, and allows service providers to extend Allot's traditional DPI capabilities and policy-based Quality of Service enforcement with mitigation of security threats.
“Rather than taking a signature-based approach, which is what some of the current solutions do, we do what we call behavioral anomaly detection,” Mello explained. “We are looking at every single packet and identifying patterns of activity that look abnormal. We can then quarantine the traffic and leave it to the service provider to determine how to handle it. Do they want to block it, rate-limit it or dump it into a specific site and then say to the user, ‘We have software that will clean your PC because it looks like you have a virus?’”
Mello believes that the main benefit of this approach is that it avoids the time lag required to generate a specific signature for a new threat and then publish that signature for detection. By taking a deeper look at every single packet, instead of using a sampling method, Allot also guarantees that botnet attacks, which may use a small number of packets in a large stream, can still be identified.
Service providers can use the Allot ServiceProtector 4.0 capabilities to clean up their networks and to offer a service to customers, Mello said.
“They can offer to provide their customers with the cleansing software for free, or they can say, ‘For $2 a month, we’ll make sure you never get hit by botnet software,’” Mello added.
Currently, service providers must depend on their customers to buy and implement software protection, and many don’t, making it easier for botnet attacks to proliferate.
"With the ServiceProtector in our network, we have seen a significant decline in the number of SPAM and other attacks and a dramatic decrease in the number of help desk calls we receive on a daily basis," said Dr. Viriya Upatising, chief technical officer of True Internet, Thailand. "Allot's security solution improves our subscribers' Quality of Experience, and helps reduces our operational costs.”
Designed for carriers, service providers and enterprises, Allot solutions apply deep packet inspection (DPI) technology to transform broadband pipes into smart networks. This creates the visibility and control vital to manage applications, services and subscribers, guarantee quality of service (QoS), contain operating costs and maximize revenue. Allot puts its customers first and provides them access to its global network of visionaries, innovators and support engineers.
For more information, please visit: http://www.allot.com.