By Tim Young
“He is most free from danger who, even when safe, is on his guard.”
-Publilius Syrus, First Century, BC
Network monitoring, as the many and experienced voices in this month’s issue of Pipeline prove, is a valuable thing. It’s crucial to maintain awareness and, therefore, control of the activity taking place on your network for a variety of reasons. Communications being a business, the chief reason is generally going to be to maintain profitability by ensuring QoE to end users, recognizing leaks in the system, rescuing stranded assets, and so forth. However, we cannot forget the security implications of network monitoring. Fraud, malice, and policy violations are a serious threat to the security of a company and, in many cases, have deeper implications for the wider security of entire nations and regions.
Maintaining profitability is what makes network monitoring mission-critical to the bottom line. Maintaining security is what makes network monitoring mission-critical to the safety of companies and the wider world.
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We cannot forget the security implications of network monitoring. |
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obtained through cyber espionage), and the networks themselves, which can be shut down to disrupt the conduct of business and the workings of the media, and can even be made to play unwilling host to the political messages and propaganda of the attackers.
Sources at Narus point to an alarming increase in cutting-edge threats like polymorphic worms, zero day attacks
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A wide world of threats
Warfare and terrorism are painful realities of the material world around us, but are, of course, unwelcome residents in the cyber world, as well. ““Our CSP customers tell us that the security threats they face today are global, both on the economic and political fronts”, Les Niles, VP of Product Management for Narus Systems (a firm dedicated to network monitoring with extensive work of the security side) told Pipeline. “These threats are becoming more and more complex and difficult to detect as new types of attacks, ranging from network-based to application-based, are unleashed almost daily.”
Some specific areas that are being threatened by cyber attacks, according to Niles, include critical infrastructure (water, power, banking), sensitive information (which can be
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(attacks perpetrated on software prior to the first day of vendor awareness that a security problem exists—the “zeroth day” of knowledge), and a movement from flood-based to application-based attacks.
However, it should be noted that just a few weeks ago, a number of media outlets were whipped into a frenzy over a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack against US and South Korean websites that was reported by many to have been perpetrated by the North Korean government. US Representative Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) urged retaliation, claiming that the attack couldn’t have been perpetrated by amateurs and that a “show of force” was needed. However, Kim Zetter of Wired Magazine pointed out, following the attacks, that the source of the traffic that flooded the
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