The software, from Narus, that the Bush White House loves to abuse use has been partnered with IBM. This is in direct response to the growing business with Telecoms moving to managed service providers. A great deal of this shift is due in no small part to businesses ranting begging pleading asking for telecoms to do their part to fight back against the rising tide spam and botnets. I clearly remember meeting with our ISP in 1999 asking them to put controls in place to mitigate the DDoS attacks that were emerging at the time. Their reply to us was “think of us as a taxi cab. We get you where you have to go but, beyond that you’re on your own.” You should have seen the surprise on his face as I fed his tie into the shredder.

Now, here we sit 7 years later and the shift has begun in earnest. Speedy? No. But, at least it’s happening at all. The software from Narus which was originally designed as billing for content usage has become the eavesdropping/analysis tool of choice. And by all accounts it is a very capable solution. The package offering from Narus and IBM,

Labeled as IBM’s Telecom Core Infrastructure Security package, the product integrates the company’s BladeCenter, Tivoli Netcool, Websphere and DB2 products, along with Narus’ Insight Secure technology.

The IBM telecommunications security package promises to allow carriers to monitor network traffic to detect emerging attacks, abuse and behavioral anomalies to help prevent IT systems breaches and help telecommunications firms stem attack propagation carried out over their infrastructure.

I have ranted about Narus in the past, or a more important distinction being the abuse of Narus software but, I have also clarified my position. From the perspective of a telecom provider this is a great opportunity. But, from the perspective of Joe Websurfer this is a dark omen. The parody that was seen here could be closer to a reality. Play nice kids. The man is watching.
Article Link

Tags: Narus, IBM, Telecom Security, Eavesdropping, Anomaly Detection