PLAYING IT SAFE

Security Plays Key New Role in Managed Services

With the Sept. 11 attacks still fresh in the nation's collective memory and Internet security vulnerability reports to the CERT Coordination Center more than doubling annually, carriers recently have unlocked a raft of new security services.

"The task of defending against the swell of cyber-threats is inundating businesses and their internal resources," says Allan Carey, senior analyst for information security services at the consulting arm of IDC. So services such as VPNs, intrusion detection and managed firewall and related services increasingly are becoming a staple of many service providers' managed services portfolios.

Comfort Services

Customers today are interested in "comfort services," notes Tom Osha, chief of staff at Broadwing Inc. Broadwing unveiled a managed router service for dedicated IP and frame relay at the recent N+I show and also came out with a new security suite that includes CPE-based VPN and managed firewall and intrusion detection.

Broadwing's intrusion detection service actually is a rebranded offering from NetSolve, which pings each specified device on the service every 90 seconds, says Osha. Typically, service providers ping at five-minute intervals. "They have very robust network management and Web tools that check fault isolation and what engineers are working on a problem," says Osha, referring to NetSolve.

Osha says Broad- wing is targeting busi- nesses and organizations of all sizes with these offerings. "It's not a matter of can [a large enterprise] do it?" He says, "It's more a case of do they want to do blue collar stuff like this?" And while these services allow customers to pass off the daily operations of monitoring and management, they retain much of the control because they have visibility in what's going on through the Web tools, he adds.

Also at N+I, NTT/Verio released a flurry of security news, expanding on its shared and dedicated hosting business. A new Enterprise Modular Hosting release from the company includes a suite of modules including security, managed storage, monitoring, backup and restore, and more. NTT/Verio does server resource monitoring, includes poll- and event-based management using Micromuse tools and offers a Web-services portal. New in this release are enhanced monitoring, storage area network, Hot Database Back- up, SecureEntrance Firewalls and BackLink. SecureEntrance does router-based filtering. BackLink gives customers a secure way to tap into their server from the backend, rather than through the front end where they'd have to compete with visitors to their Web site and could create site degradation as a result.

Full-Service Security

In announcing their respective new security strategies, WorldCom Inc. and SBC Com- munications Inc. stressed the one-stop, full- service capabilities they deliver.

WorldCom is reselling Internet Security Systems Inc.'s services packaged with its existing managed services. ISS specializes in vulnerability assessment, intrusion detection and managed services associated with those disciplines. The companies will pitch their combined, outsourced data networking and security solutions as a reliable alternative to expending time and capital in self-managing critical, highly specialized functions.

Bob Blakely, senior manager of security service for WorldCom, says customer demand led to the partnership. "Until now, WorldCom has focused on security as an extension of our virtual private network, managed firewall, authentication and other managed network services, but we've seen customer requirements expand to areas beyond that. So this made for an ideal opportunity to partner with ISS."

Both companies emphasized the agreement will afford customers two key benefits: global reach and one-stop shopping for managed networking and security services.

"There are a lot of customers looking for a single source," says Mark Wood, ISS's director of offer management services and intellectual capital. "We already have six operations centers on four continents, so we can deliver services to customers wherever they are."

The services include managed network protection, intrusion event monitoring, remote scanning and anti-virus services from Internet Security Systems. WorldCom also will offer ISS emergency response services, in which ISS personnel will "almost parachute in" to troubled customer sites, Wood says.

Under WorldCom's banner, the companies will deliver "comprehensive" security solutions with consulting and design, configuration and installation, maintenance, software upgrades, 24-by-7 management and monitoring, backup and restoration services provided by Internet Security Systems. "We will pull ISS into our solution development teams," Blakely says. The services will be accessible via "a single source and single point of contact, which will be evident from the proposal state through delivery and support," monitored and maintained through WorldCom's Security Operations Center and security services organization, he adds.

While multinational companies will constitute a sweet spot for such services, small and medium businesses, though more cost-conscious, face all the same security concerns, Blakely says. "It's all about making it all seamless to the customer, rather than presenting him with piece parts he needs to put together."

Recently, SBC began pushing a full slate of security services, including consulting, policy development, operational support and monitoring of customer equipment and firewalls located at the customer's premises or hosted in SBC's Internet data centers. SBC also works with enterprise customers to comply with security regulations and standards dictated by their individual industries.

Empire Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Greater New York, for which SBC provided VPN services for displaced employees following the Sept. 11 attacks, is one of SBC's customers for the total outsourced security solution.

Entry-Level Security

While Sprint Corp. already offers a full slate of security services, the company recently added a new entry-level security suite.

The security suite includes an external scan service, an automated feature that looks at the customer's servers, routers, firewalls and other outward-facing equipment to see what resources are available and what appears vulnerable. An attack and penetration test offered by Sprint as part of the suite is a more manually intensive service. For about a week, Sprint employees attempt to hack into the customer's network. It could look into such issues as whether there are credit card numbers on a server that an outsider could easily view, says Dale Bachman, security practice manager with Sprint E/Solutions.

Customers also may want simply to use it to prove they're building a secure network, he adds. Finally, Sprint has added what it calls a wireless LAN survey to its portfolio. For that, Sprint does a search for the presence of wireless LANs at a customer site.

Bachman notes that it might seem that knowledge of a wireless LAN would be obvious to a site owner, but he says it may not be since employees so easily can set up wireless LAN connections. These wireless LANs, which can allow an individual to tap into the corporate LAN even from outside the building, create a potential security problem for a company, says Bachman.

He also stresses none of these new security services offers a complete assessment of security issues. He explains that a complete assessment would include such practices as interviewing the customer's executives and staff, the review and possible creation of security procedure documentation, and more. Sprint has long provided these services, he says. 

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