Network Security & Service Integrity

Carrier Core Security Challenges

Converged carrier networks and broadband connections introduce new network security and service integrity challenges brought on by carrying uncontrolled Internet and peering traffic that contain growing volumes of known and zero-minute attacks and bandwidth hungry peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic. Worm propagation attacks and Denial of Service (DoS) attacks originating from both subscribers and external users are creating service floods that are overwhelming the carrier network infrastructure.

These attacks – including both large- and small-scale attacks that are difficult to detect and prevent – cause routing component failures and resource abuses that undermine and disrupt network service operations: Intrusion attacks (upstream or customer-generated) that exploit network vulnerabilities negatively impact mission-critical high-touch servers and compromise network elements by attacking the control plane (i.e., border gateway protocol [BGP] injection, fragmentation attacks) and the management plane. In addition, uncontrolled P2P traffic which has become the dominant network traffic, is consuming core and edge bandwidth resources, causing severe bottlenecks that prevent carriers from meeting customer service level agreements (SLAs) while driving up OPEX/CAPEX.