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November 11, 2008
Report: Arbor Networks Inc. Analyzes Network Security
By Jessica Kostek, TMCnet Channel Editor
For many companies today, security is just another item to put on the list of things to worry about. Keeping their networks secure and functional is a key component in keeping the corporation up and running. Completing a recent study done by Arbor Networks Inc, in cooperation with the Internet security operations community, has issued its fourth edition of its ongoing series of annual operational security surveys.
The survey was done in a 12-month period from August 2007 through July 2008. It was designed to provide useful data to network operators in order for them to make informed decisions about their use of network security technology protecting their infrastructures.
Arbor Networks also intended the information found to be used as a general resource for the Internet operations and engineering community. The results provided in the survey, the company states, is geared more accurately to represent real-world concerns than theoretical and emerging attack vectors addressed and speculated about elsewhere.
Some of the key findings included in the report are:
- Strain of operational resources–Most concern in today’s IT security environment is surprisingly spam (both inbound and outbound). It took the top spot at nearly 32%, followed closely by security events from constant background activity (e.g., scans, worms, etc…) at 27%. DDoS attacks came in at 21%, closely inline with its position last year.
- Managed Security Services on the rise – With more mission-critical services being converged onto IP-based networks, and more revenue being tied to customer network availability, a DDoS managed security services (MSS) market has been born—purely out of necessity. Many organizations generate a majority, and often times all of their revenue, from Web or other network service transactions, and their Internet “presence’ and availability is critical to their fiscal well-being. As a result, many enterprises have demanded that their service providers offer “clean pipes” services. These enterprises now consider a subscription to such services as an everyday cost of doing business on the Internet, and budget for these services just as they would disaster recovery, data backups, and traditional network redundancy.
- Botnet Threats: Bots and botnets still rank highest as the largest problem facing network operators in the next 12 months. Threats ranked by survey respondent included:
- Bots and Botnets 26%
- DNS Cache Poisoning 2 3%
- BGP Route Hijacking (unintentional or malicious) 15%
- Services DDoS (DNS, VoIP, other) 11%
- Link or Host flooding 9%
- Systems/Infrastructure Compromise 6%
- Worms 5%
- Credentials Theft 5%
- Emerging Threats for VoIP and IPv6– Emerging threat vectors in the coming year will include VoIP and IPv6. Relative to IPv6, 55% of respondents agree that the scale and frequency of security threats will increase as IPv6 becomes more widely deployed, while only 8% of respondents believe threats will decrease. Although VoIP continues to be a rising attack vector for hackers, ISPs are under prepared to protect their VoIP infrastructure from attack. Only 21% of respondents indicated that they had tools in place to detect threats against VoIP infrastructure or services.
Arbor Networks Inc.’s conclusion may not have offered a glisten of hope but it did heed a warning. In the future the ISP security landscape will continue to change rapidly. With growing concerns over an array of new threats, including DNS poisoning, route hijacking and service-level attacks, survey trends over the last few years have suggested attack sizes may be on pace to approach 100 gigabits by this time next year.
Jessica Kostek is a channel editor for TMCnet, covering VoIP, CRM, call center and wireless technologies. To read more of Jessica’s articles, please visit her columnist page.
