Welcome to the ICANN57 schedule! This seven-day, Annual General Meeting is focused on outreach, capacity building, and showcasing ICANN’s work to a broader global audience. For more details about the meeting, click here.
The global economy and a nation’s critical infrastructure rely on the Internet for communication and connectivity. Telecommunication networks act as the heart of the interconnect between various industries, organizations, countries etc. However; the Internet traffic, in addition to genuine data packets also contains spurious / malicious traffic like spyware, malware, worms, trojans etc. This not only compromises security of data but also chokes up the bandwidth. It also points to the disturbing fact that several end user systems may have been compromised and may be acting as botnets to help malicious agents launch spam. What is worrisome is that the systems may become vehicle for distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. A DDoS attack can saturate an organization's Internet connectivity, impacting its ability to conduct business thereby having a negative impact on revenue and brand reputation. DDoS attacks pose the biggest challenge to organizations and they may need to shell out millions to install on-premise solutions to protect connectivity to service nodes. However, as demonstrated by recent incidents involving attack on DyN, NASDAQ, Spamhaus and several global firms, organizations need to ensure they work with all entities in the connectivity value chain to secure their Internet pipe and ensure continuity of business. To mitigate DDoS attacks before they start to block traffic to the targeted enterprise, and defend against the many other threats the concept of a “Clean Pipe” emerges. With their unique vantage point over the organizations network, telecom firms are ideally placed to deliver “clean pipe” Internet service by curtailing external network threats before they reach their customers’ endpoints. Their protection service may leverage and integrate with domestic and international partners to gather intelligence and exercise defensive measures. Considering the sheer number of networks and systems managed by the telecom industry, they are uniquely positioned to help strengthen cyberspace. The telecom industry not only provides an organization with the means to secure their mobile and endpoint environment but also eliminates the need for extensive investment in security hardware and costs associated with maintenance and management. The telecom industry is suitably positioned to monitor the Internet pipe on a continuous basis thus providing better network uptime, zero latency and packet drop amongst many other advantages. - Staff Leader: Samiran Gupta
