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By
Tim Young, with Greg Oslan
In approaching the issue of network security, we decided to take a moment to speak to Greg Oslan, the CEO of Narus Systems, a vendor of network intelligence solutions, about the scope of network security and lawful intercept.
Pipeline: How has the approach carriers have taken to network security changed over the last few years?
Greg Oslan: Network security has certainly evolved. The term “security” had a specific meaning a few years ago. People said “well, security is about protecting my networks against worms or viruses and denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.” What has happened over the last few years is that security has taken on the nomenclature of Kleenex. They just bought a box yesterday, and they're not sure why they'd need a new box today unless they have the worst cold on the planet. That's occurred because security in the IP world has evolved into a discussion about how to manage what's on or not on my network. You want to be able to deal with unwanted, unwarranted, or malicious traffic that is trying to get on or has gotten on the network. It could be a worm or a virus. It could be a DoS attack. It could be an intrusion. It could also be spam. It could also be malformed packets coming from a bad network. We always though that security and traditional network management would converge and, in fact, that's the case today. The difference in the IP world is that in the traditional TDM world it was about managing the elements. In the IP world it's about the health of the traffic.
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What has happened over the last few years is that security has taken on the nomenclature of Kleenex. They just bought a box yesterday, and they're not sure why they'd need a new box today unless they have the worst cold on the planet. |
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first publicly announced, frankly, act of war between those two states. We also saw the U.S. accuse China of intruding into its networks. The new battlefield, as we move from a physical world to a virtual world, is the world wide web. It's not the physical battlefield.
Pipeline: So hacking isn't “cute” anymore. It's moved from a small problem to a legitimate battleground.
Oslan: That's absolutely correct. It's become split like anything of that scale. It's political, between governments and potentially a |
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The other element is that security was brought about because there were a bunch of hackers, who tended to be teenagers and college kids who were very smart and somewhat bored and were looking for cool, creative, and somewhat mischievous things to do. While some of those had negative effects, they weren't meant to truly create massive harm. That has changed, particularly in the last 12-18 months. There has been a lot publicly written about attacks on Estonia by Russia, for example, which was really the |
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prelude to war. It's organized crime and ways to extort or create economic wealth through ill-gotten means. You still have some of the mischief, but much less so, because that was probably the easiest thing for the government to crack down on. The kids didn't want to go to jail. That's a simple thing. Governments don't care about going to jail, and organized crime doesn't seem to worry about it either. It's gotten so organized that in many places you can buy the capability
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