TelstraClear helps secure the Cloud

TelstraClear is helping secure Cloud computing by participating in an international partnership that will help protect against distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.

“For two years the biggest threat to network operators and their customers,” says TelstraClear Head of Business & Government, Andrew Crabb. “As a leading New Zealand telco with world-class products and services and major private sector and government customers it’s vital that we support proven initiatives that increase internet security."

TelstraClear has joined a select group of major international players as part of US-based Arbor Networks Cloud Signaling Coalition (CSC), an innovative partnership between service providers, network operators and data center customers. The group’s mission is to ensure the availability of Internet Data Center (IDC) infrastructure and speed time-to-mitigation for distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.

“While we have not had any issues with DDoS attacks it’s important to remain ahead of the wave. We’re committed to doing that and will assist wherever we can to make the internet a safer place for businesses and consumers. Botnet-driven volumetric and application-layer DDoS attacks are significant problems for network operators,” says Andrew Crabb. “Volumetric DDoS attacks topped the 100Gbps barrier and 77% of respondents detected application layer attacks according to the Arbor Networks 2010 Worldwide Infrastructure Security Report.”

Application layer attacks target both end users and network operators’ own critical supporting services. As cloud computing becomes more prevalent, the threats due to DDoS also increase.

“As part of the international Cloud Signaling Coalition we’re helping address this. When one of our customers discovers that they are under a service-disrupting DDoS attack, they can choose to mitigate the attack in the cloud by triggering a signal to our upstream network infrastructure. A volumetric DDoS attack congesting the upstream links would immediately diminish or disappear altogether from the customer’s access links and service availability would be protected.

“Our participation in the Coalition allows our customers to reduce time to mitigation and increase the effectiveness of response against DDoS threats, potentially preventing major operational expense and preserving their reputation."

ENDS

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