Software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualisation (NFV) may provide opportunities to overcome key networking challenges – but security remains a key concern.

“Telecommunications regulators and national security agencies worldwide are very concerned – even alarmed – about the potential risks of cyber-attacks from state-based actors against centralised telecommunications end-to-end service and network orchestration technology platforms or solutions from single vendors,” says Roger Carvosso, Chief Product Officer. “They are also concerned about the dominance or concentration of market power to one or a few NFV orchestration vendors or standards in the telecommunications, carriage service provider and digital service provider space.”

“The importance of security planning, design and controls needed for any orchestrator that has privileged access to network elements for the purpose of service and network orchestration can’t be understated.”

Security also remains a divisive issue within many telecommunications providers, with an intra-organisational divide between cybersecurity leaders such as vice-presidents of security products, professionals and operations team members and SDN/NFV networking engineers. These engineers are typically not as aware or as knowledgeable of security or cybersecurity-as-a-service, or the importance of baking security as a philosophy or discipline to be baked into SDN/NFV technologies, tools and processes.

At FirstWave, we are working to ensure our CyberCision platform security architecture, including APIs, has the highest level of security accreditation and validation – where the required components have privileged access to telecommunications network elements for service and network orchestration. Our platform effectively supports the diversification of orchestration vendors and a more competitive, secure sector.  Our products and culture can also help telecommunications providers bridge the internal security gap and capture the value possible through SDN and NFV.

For more information, contact us at: sales@firstwavecloud.com.

So, your boss has just set up a blend of different software products or a SaaS product to take care of the network monitoring. Did your boss really do you a favour or just add to your headache? Has the situation truly improved, or do you just have more unresolved problems?

These are the five most common complaints we hear and solve on day one out of the box.

1. Too Many Alerts.

This is probably the most common problem with monitoring tools. Everything is turned on either out of the box or by the administrator’s choosing and organizations must rely on the logs to get the information they need. There is a fear of missing something but setting up alerts should be a thoughtful process, standardized amongst your team, and carefully chosen. Careful and well-considered Integrations with other tools like email, SMS, and ticketing systems are essential – but you can’t be inserting and sending out junk or it will be ignored.

2. The monitoring tool is indeed the resource hog and has a slow database.

Many popular monitoring tools are built on Microsoft technology using multiple on-premises servers. To scale, it usually takes building a replica of your multiple server setup and additional software licensing costs (Microsoft Server, SQL and the Monitoring Tool) every time you add a server. Then there’s the ongoing operational management of the multiple servers. With so much data constantly processed, the user experience is slow and poor.

3. One size does not fit all / no access to the API.

Many popular tools now are built in the cloud, and you do not own your data. Your data may be rolled up, removed, or you only have access to specific periods of your data. It is no good for longer-term trending or baseline troubleshooting. You need complete API access to your data to integrate it into your business operations.

4. Security.

Supply chain attacks are becoming more frequent. We all know what happened this year with many Telecommunications, Managed Service Providers, Internet Service Providers, the US Federal Government forced to turn off their monitoring tools. While patches were developed to work around the issue, the depth of what the hackers got is still not well understood. I feel for MSPs as their SLAs are destroyed. Hopefully, those force majeure clauses get interpreted favourably.

With an on-premise platform, you have to control it 100%. Complete control ensures that the product works within your security parameters.

5. Automation.

If you have installed many different tools, setting up some automation between them is extremely difficult. Furthermore, the automation breaks when you need to update or reconfigure one or more underlying applications for other reasons (e.g. Security). A SaaS solution may have various actions that they class as automation; however, they lack the flexibility you need for your environment.

Here at Opmantek, we have a strong belief that monitoring tools should be customizable. We believe this helps the overall flexibility, extensibility, scalability and security posture of your organization, ensuring that in the end, you get what you’re really after and that is less downtime!

Solve these five problems and more – > ask us how

Most businesses and government organisations are now aware that cybersecurity is not merely the responsibility of IT. They recognise that everyone is accountable for protecting systems, people and information from attack. They also know that many attacks occur from within rather than from external parties. So how can they make part of their business culture?

Education is key. An education program should complement and explain robust security policies that detail the assets a business or organisation needs to protect, the threats to those assets and the rules and controls for protecting them.

An effective program makes every worker acutely aware of cyber threats, including emails or text messages designed to trick them into providing personal or financial information; entice them to click links to websites or open attachments containing malware, or deceive them into paying fake invoices that purport to be from a senior executive.

It teaches them how to recognise common threats, the actions they need to take and people they need to inform when targeted and the steps to take if they do fall victim to a malicious individual or software. In addition, the program should teach workers how to recognise and respond to poor – or suspicious – cybersecurity behaviour by a colleague.

Cybersecurity education also needs to extend to a business or government organisation’s senior leadership team, who should also visibly support its objectives and model appropriate behaviours. It should also encourage workers and managers to pass on lessons learned to friends and family to help them avoid being compromised by malicious cyber activities.

Perhaps most importantly, it is not good enough to run a cybersecurity education program once and consider it a box ticked. A business or government organisation should run programs regularly and update them as needed to account for changes in policies and the threat landscape. It should also provide ongoing information and direct people to resources such as the Australian Cyber Security Centre for assistance.

Cybersecurity policies and education programs also need to complement the effective use of proven, regularly updated security products to protect systems, people and information from cyber threats.

For more information, contact us at: sales@firstwavecloud.com

​Keeping systems and information safe is an increasingly complex, high-stakes activity. Trusting individuals or systems by default may have catastrophic consequences if it leads to malicious parties gaining access to corporate networks or resources. These consequences may include service disruption and loss or theft of sensitive information – and may , in‌ ‌turn, lead to  reputational damage as customers and partners lose trust in an affected organisation. In addition, regulators may impose financial penalties if a breach results from a failure of systems or processes.

Unsurprisingly, businesses and government organisations are turning away from security models that trust individuals or systems by default. As TechTarget notes, these models are ill-equipped to handle data distributed across multiple locations, applications and cloud services. A zero-trust approach requires strict identity and device verification not just to get past the network perimeter, but to access internal systems and resources. By segmenting network components and systems and imposing access requirements for each segment – as well as using risk management analytics to identify suspicious activity – businesses and government organisations can respond effectively to modern security challenges.

Zero-trust network access is continuing to gain traction in business and government – particularly as digital transformation projects take effect. According to a Gartner report, because digital transformation projects “require services APIs, data and processes to be accessible through multiple ecosystems anywhere, anytime, from any device over the internet, [they expand] the surface area for attackers to target.”

Gartner says zero-trust network access “provides adaptive, identity-aware, precision access” and “enables digital ecosystems to work without exposing services directly to the internet.”

The analyst firm predicts that, by 2022, 80% of new digital business applications opened up to ecosystem partners will be accessed through zero-trust network access, while by 2023, 60% of enterprises will phase out most of their remote access virtual private networks in favour of network access.

Is your business or government organisation adopting zero-trust network access? What challenges and opportunities is this approach presenting? Please let us know at sales@firstwavecloud.com.