In recent months many telecommunications companies have begun assuming greater responsibility for providing cyber security services. as it’s both a necessity and a revenue opportunity for them. DDoS mitigation as a service is one of these newer offerings because service availability is a fundamental, critical aspect of customer service, and revenue generation. It’s not surprising that telecoms have invested in cyber security to maintain uptime/reliability in their own networks, and are now augmenting their service offerings to include security.

Telecoms are increasingly expected to be the gatekeepers of “clean pipe;” many of their customers expect their upstream provider to deliver Internet service that is void of cyber threats. In a recent Computer Business Review article, Dave Larson, Chief Operating Officer at Corero Network Security, explains this further:

“Imagine running a bath and seeing that a quarter of the water coming through the tap was contaminated. When the bill from the water company came, I don't imagine anyone being too happy paying for a contaminated supply. People can justifiably look at their Internet service in the same way. If a provider isn't including effective security as a part of its service offering they may send useless and potentially harmful traffic across their customers' networks.”

For today’s internet-driven businesses, any service degradation or outage can have a detrimental impact on brand, customer loyalty and the bottom line. Increasingly, such incidents are being caused by Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, and this is one area where telcoms can take leadership.

DDoS Attack Protection

DDoS attacks have grown in frequency, ferocity and sophistication in the past ten years. To reduce liability and do a better job of protecting sensitive data, telecoms should examine their DDoS mitigation capabilities to ensure that their security perimeter is configured to avoid compromise in this way.

Cyber threats often go hand in hand with personal data breaches and theft; in some industries, companies can suffer potentially catastrophic regulatory impositions and fines for not protecting their data. Telcoms, as internet connectivity and managed security service providers, are more obligated than ever to protect both their networks and their customers. Presumably, DDoS protection regulation won’t be far away, given that major security breaches associated with DDoS cause the loss of vast amounts of customer credit card data. (For more on this topic, download our report, “Tackling the Growing Threats of DDoS in Telcoms.”)

According to a recent survey, many customers are willing to pay for DDoS protection: just over half (51%) of network security and IT professionals indicated that they would be willing to pay their upstream ISP for a premium DDoS protection service. Proactive telcoms have an opportunity to leverage this sentiment and incorporate premium DDoS defense services into their customer contracts, resulting in important new revenue.

With Corero’s scalable and automated DDoS mitigation solutions, telcoms can include mitigation with their offerings. Computer Business Review summed up its article with the statement, “Overall, then, the main area in which telcos can lead in the cyber security space is by building the protective solutions directly into the connectivity that companies buy from them.”