Defeating Cyber Threats Requires a Wider Net

As more organizations and users utilize the Internet, there will be more data, more management needs, and a lot of worries around security. The big push around cloud and the modern cloud-ready data center really revolves around IT consumerization and newly available resources. Just like any infrastructure, the bigger and more popular it gets – the bigger the target.

Bill Kleyman

March 13, 2013

3 Min Read
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As more organizations and users utilize the Internet, there will be more data, more management needs, and a lot of worries around security. The big push around cloud and the modern cloud-ready data center really revolves around IT consumerization and newly available resources. Just like any infrastructure, the bigger and more popular it gets – the bigger the target.

Cyber threats have been growing and at an alarming rate. Not only have frequencies increased - the creativity of the intrusions and attacks are staggering as well. There plenty of evidence to supporting this as well:

  • Malware is reaching new all-time highs – Trend Micro, for example, has identified 145 thousand malicious Android apps, as of September 2012.2 Keeping malware at bay, already a “treading water” challenge, is intensifying.

  • BYOD is a growing threat vector – Frost & Sullivan estimates smartphones shipped in 2012 will reach 558 million, and tablets will reach 93 million. With more users using more cloud networks – targets will become larger as well.

  • Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are approaching mainstream In a 2012 survey of network operators conducted by Arbor Networks, over three-quarters of the operators experienced DDoS attacks targeting their customers.

  • Exposure footprint is expanding –According to a Frost & Sullivan 2012 global survey of security professionals, slightly more than one-third of the respondents cite cloud computing as a high priority for their organizations now, and that percentage increases to 54 percent in two years.

With the evident change in the technological landscape, there will undoubtedly be a need to re-evaluate existing security environments. Why is the case? Simple, many existing security platforms are just not enough to handle today’s demands around cyber security. In this white paper, new types of security platforms are explored. Specifically, Arbor’s ATLAS platform is seen as a leader in enterprise-ready security and traffic-monitoring. Between these two sources, Arbor is collecting data from all assigned IP addresses—service-active IP addresses from Arbor platforms and service-inactive IP addresses from darknet-hosted ATLAS sensors.

Arbor’s ATLAS platform

Defeating Cyber Threats Requires a Wider Net

Launched in 2007, ATLAS collects network traffic data from sensors hosted in carriers’ darknets, and data from carrier and enterprise-deployed Arbor monitoring platforms. Download this white paper to see how ATLAS and its platform has direct benefits for carriers and enterprises. This includes:

  • More threats are proactively mitigated, resulting in a lower overall risk posture.

  • Less remediation occurs. With fewer attacks being successful, remediation efforts will be fewer in number and smaller in scale.

  • As ATLAS researchers monitor and assess traffic data from Arbor platforms and darknet sensors, carrier and enterprise security analysts gain the benefits of this threat analysis without incurring the work effort.

Remember, the cyber threat environment will only continue to grow and evolve. Whether your environment is utilizing the WAN or some type of cloud environment – it’s time to evaluate your security infrastructure and see how new, advanced, platforms can help.

About the Author

Bill Kleyman

Bill Kleyman has more than 15 years of experience in enterprise technology. He also enjoys writing, blogging, and educating colleagues about tech. His published and referenced work can be found on Data Center Knowledge, AFCOM, ITPro Today, InformationWeek, NetworkComputing, TechTarget, DarkReading, Forbes, CBS Interactive, Slashdot, and more.

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