Tata Communications’ DDoS Detection and Mitigation service has been recognised by industry leaders¹ as the world’s fullest coverage distributed denial of service (DDoS) detection and mitigation deployment. Combined with India’s only domestically located DDoS mitigation centre, Tata Communications’ DDoS detection and mitigation services are specifically designed to defend critical network infrastructure and business applications from frequent cyber attacks being mounted on both Indian government and private computer networks.

As reported by a leading Indian publication recently, “almost daily attacks” are being mounted on Indian government and private computer networks². It is estimated there are already close to 50,000 malicious BOTS³ in India at present; there are millions more around the globe. The point that officials are making is that there are networks in India and internationally that are controlled from outside — “a sort of cyberspace fifth column.” The danger is that at an appointed time, the external controllers of BOTNETS will command the infected networks of “zombie” computers to potentially create a national security emergency by flooding traffic at key network and application infrastructure.

“Research from our global network of security partners show 90 per cent of security vulnerabilities are remotely exploitable,” said Col AJ Vijayakumar, (Indian Army, retired), CISSP and head of Tata Communications’ Security Services Operations Centre (SOC) in Chennai, India, which manages Tata Communications’ defense-in-depth managed security services suite.

He further added: “The number of disclosed critical computer vulnerabilities grew 28 per cent in 2007 and only half of these are addressed by traditional software patching. What is driving this trend is the increasing complexity of IT, the growth of web applications and the difficulty and cost of retaining capable security staff.”

Tata Communications’ DDoS detection and mitigation security services provide real-time application-layer analysis of all IP traffic traversing the company’s global IP backbone. By monitoring and analysing customer traffic in real time and on a 24x7x365 basis, Tata Communications provides proactive notification of actionable events to its customers, improving visibility into the security and availability of their networks and applications.

Tata Communications’ security analysts can quickly determine the root cause of changes in traffic, be it a violation of usage policy, a worm outbreak, or a DDoS attack by millions of computers from different parts of the world. Such attack traffic is filtered in the Tata Communications’ backbone before customer resources are impacted, leading to optimum utilization of bandwidth.

“Achieving an effective state of information security goes far beyond any one security technology,” said John Landau, senior vice president, Managed Solutions, Tata Communications. “The real work lies in enforcing security policies with repeatable processes, having a global view of evolving security threats and correlating tremendous volumes of information to swiftly detect and mitigate security events. A defense-in-depth strategy deploys resources in appropriate roles and in mutually supportive positions. As one of the world’s largest network operators, Tata Communications delivers a cost effective defense-in-depth solution that allows Indian government and private customers to assess and prevent information security problems such as DDoS attacks.”

Notes:

1. http://www.arbornetworks.com/en/world-s-largest-ddos-detection-and-mitigation-service-launched-via-arbor-networks-pea.html
   
   
2. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/China_mounts_cyber_
   attacks_on_Indian_sites/articleshow/3010288.cms
   
   
3. A BOT is a “hijacked” PC on the internet. A hostile software virus gets embedded into computers and enables a remote cyber terrorist to hijack control of BOT armies without the PC owners being aware. The cyber attackers marshall the BOTs for malicious acts such as flooding targeted sites to shut them down- a “distributed denial of service” attack. Such attacks, typically against commercial website targets, occur around the world everyday.
   

Forward-looking and cautionary statements

Certain words and statements in this release concerning Tata Communications and its prospects, and other statements, including those relating to Tata Communications’ expected financial position, business strategy, the future development of Tata Communications’ operations, and the general economy in India, are forward-looking statements. Such statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, including financial, regulatory and environmental, as well as those relating to industry growth and trend projections, which may cause actual results, performance or achievements of Tata Communications, or industry results, to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. The important factors that could cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from such forward-looking statements include, among others, failure to increase the volume of traffic on Tata Communications’ network; failure to develop new products and services that meet customer demands and generate acceptable margins; failure to successfully complete commercial testing of new technology and information systems to support new products and services, including voice transmission services; failure to stabilize or reduce the rate of price compression on certain of the company’s communications services; failure to integrate strategic acquisitions and changes in government policies or regulations of India and, in particular, changes relating to the administration of Tata Communications’ industry; and, in general, the economic, business and credit conditions in India. Additional factors that could cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from such forward-looking statements, many of which are not in Tata Communications’ control, include, but are not limited to, those risk factors discussed in Tata Communications’ various filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. These filings are available at www.sec.gov. Tata Communications is under no obligation to, and expressly disclaims any obligation to, update or alter its forward-looking statements.