One of the bigger challenges facing the continued move towards cloud platforms by telecom operators is security. In the old world of hardware, as long as the door remained physically locked, security was a no-brainer. But, in the new world of software, operators are increasingly having to rely on new solutions in order to manage security in a cloud environment.
A recent Intel Security report found 23% of enterprises surveyed noted cloud provider data losses or breaches, and one in five reported unauthorized access to their organization’s data or services in the cloud. Verizon Communications’ Enterprise Solutions division earlier this year was hit by a data breach that reportedly included information on 1.5 million customers, which ended up for sale online. According to a report from Krebs on Security, the Verizon division, which focuses on protecting enterprise data, was hit by an attack breaching a recently identified security flaw.
“Verizon recently discovered and remediated a security vulnerability on our enterprise client portal,” the company said in an emailed statement to Krebs on Security. “Our investigation to date found an attacker obtained basic contact information on a number of our enterprise customers. No customer proprietary network information or other data was accessed or accessible.”
The information obtained through the hack ended up on a “closely guarded underground cybercrime forum” with a price tag of $100,000 for all the information, or parceled out in chunks of 100,000 records for $10,000. Verizon claims it’s a significant provider of services to most Fortune 500 companies.
Krebs on Security itself also caught in a security issue when a distributed denial of service attack attempted to take down the site. However, it was noted the blow from the attack was softened by the strategic use of cloud platforms that allowed for the malicious content to be streamed off into various storage servers.
“The power of cloud actually helps with DDoS to use the capacity of the cloud to divert attacks,” said Simon Leech, chief technologist for security at Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. “The challenge comes on the other side when the DDoS is from a botnet that the attacker is controlling. The attack on Krebs was made up of hundreds of thousands of IoT platforms.”
Questions around these attacks have dinged enterprise confidence in public cloud security.
About six in 10 companies in a recent AT&T survey showed “high levels” of confidence that their data residing in the public cloud will be secure for the next 12 months. However, the survey also found companies storing more than half of their data in the cloud reported a higher frequency of malware, ransomware, APTs, theft of proprietary information and unauthorized access to corporate data than those storing less than half of their data in the cloud.
A Cloud Security Alliance survey from earlier this year found a growing number of IT professionals consider cloud platforms to be equally or more secure than on-premises systems. The survey found 35% of IT leaders believe that cloud-based systems of record are less secure than their on-premises counterparts. The other 65% say that the cloud is either more secure than on-premises software or equally secure.
Vendors noted that indeed many of the old models of security used by enterprises are no longer valid in the new cloud and software world, and instead enterprises needed to focus their efforts on platforms that allow them to tackle threats that should be assumed are within an organization’s ecosystem.
“We know that the old model of perimeter security is broken,” explained Andy Huckridge, director of service provider solutions at Gigamon. “Those security threats are in the network and now it’s about finding out where they are.”
Perry Price, CEO of Revation Systems, echoed those comments adding “If any user from anywhere in the world can visit your application, website or network with the intention to be malicious or harmful, then there is a fundamental need for a new model.”
Beyond securing the actual cloud infrastructure, telecom operators are also in a prime position to ensure the actual transmission of data is secured.
“Focusing on the link between the cloud and your organization is just as key to protecting your network,” AT&T noted in a security report. “With services such as [multiprotocol label switching virtual private networks], the security risks of cloud technology are reduced by securing your internet connection. Cloud security also can be jeopardized when IT teams don’t have control over who purchases cloud services across the organization. The ‘as-a-service’ model has made it easy for any employee to purchase a cloud product – whether it’s a personal application such as Dropbox or a department-wide service such as Salesforce. IT may not even be aware that these applications exist, and without proper governance, unauthorized applications may be vulnerable to weak security controls that attackers can exploit.”
“Security and integration of threat data is where we have very strong visibility into security threats across the network,” said Andy Daudelin, VP of cloud at AT&T. “We probably sit in the best position to see security threats across the network.”
Daudelin said the carrier’s NetBond product allows enterprises to secure the connection between devices and cloud deployments by never exposing that traffic to the “open internet.”
“I think the network is the best place to see things and to react,” Daudelin said. “[Over-the-top] solutions looking from the outside in cannot be as deep.”
Verizon is also a proponent of MPLS as a security protocol for transmitting data. Vickie Lonker, director of product and new business for networking at Verizon, explained the protocol is based on three principals: the necessity for address and routing separation; keeping the internal infrastructure of the core network hidden; and providing resistance to attack.
“In hiding the MPLS core structure we are not using public IP addresses that the outside world can get to,” Lonker explained.
In addition to being in an ideal spot to deal with securing transmissions, operators are also in the position to derive context about what is traveling across those networks using advanced analytics tools.
Huckridge said Gigamon’s platform allows carriers to more efficiently monitor traffic – and thus potential security issues – by increasing subscriber awareness. He explained this included the ability to correlate device types, subscribers and traffic types to optimize the security tools and help put together a “risk curve.”
“Certain devices are more risky than others,” Huckridge said. “For instance, an Android device compared with an Apple device. Or that certain types of subscribers are more risky than others. Also, certain traffic types are more risky than others in terms of the amount of data that is downloaded. You can determine a risk profile for security use tapping into this sort of knowledge.”
For more on the topic of cloud security check out the latest RCR Wireless News feature report “Securing the cloud in the age of analytics and software.”
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