Blog
Routing Security: Why We All Care That Network Operators Up Their Game
Of all the things that businesses have to think about for their websites, after branding and messaging, reliability and security are probably top of list. You pick a good hosting service, make sure all the software is up to date – patched and secure – set up monitoring, and consider it job done.
Then one day, you get reports that some of your customers are unable to reach your site. You check your monitoring – everything is fine, site is up, service is running, everything looks golden. But, more calls are coming in – customers can’t reach your site. What gives?
One of the possible reasons is that there is a routing issue – not in your network or even your hosting service’s network – but somewhere upstream from you. Either through a “fat fingered” router update misconfiguration, or malicious intention, some other network has started redirecting your traffic elsewhere.
There is no perfect Internet, but there are ways and means of reducing the likelihood of that sort of problem and improving the state of routing security. The MANRS project highlights the best current practices as they are known today.
The Global Cyber Alliance, in partnership with the Internet Society, launched a survey of network operators to gain a global understanding of the state of implementation of routing security measures, the level of concern within network operations (and business decision making), and the plans for next steps.
This survey can be filled out anonymously, although we’d certainly appreciate having your contact information for the purposes of following up with more direct questions (and no other purpose – see our privacy policy). If you operate a network (engineering or business decision making), please fill out our survey, and check back for updates!
Take the Survey
The author, Leslie Daigle, is the Global Technical Officer at the Global Cyber Alliance. You can follower her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.
