Alcatel-Lucent and Arbor Networks Team Up in the Fight Against 'Denial-of-Service' Attacks

PARIS and CHELMSFORD, Mass., Jan. 18, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris andNYSE: ALU) and Arbor Networks, a leader in network monitoring and security solutions, have joined forces to tackle the growing threat of 'distributed denial-of-service' (DDoS) attacks.

Such attacks can compromise the communication networks used to provide a growing array of cloud services as well as businesses that carry large volumes of critical data traffic over the Internet. With the world's top five percent of Internet data centers experiencing as many as 500 attacks a month*, Alcatel-Lucent and Arbor are today offering a joint solution that provides advanced DDoS protection and security capabilities to help address this escalating challenge.

* Source: Arbor Networks – 2010 Worldwide Infrastructure Security Report, January 2011

These cloud-based security services address the concerns of 3,386 IT Decision Makers that participated in a recent Alcatel-Lucent global study. Study participants cited performance and security as the two areas of cloud services needing the most improvement. A new class of carrier cloud also addresses this by combining the computing power and flexibility of the cloud, with the security, reliability and guaranteed performance of communications networks. 

Carrier clouds provide an ideal way of detecting and eliminating DDoS attacks quickly. Today, when network attacks are detected, the infected traffic is typically transported to a central location for treatment. With the largest sustained attacks on networks consuming 100 gigabits per second of capacity, transporting infected traffic to centralized locations can be both expensive and disruptive. By integrating Arbor's Threat Management System (TMS) software into Alcatel-Lucent's IP routers – wherever they are located in a given network – attacks can be detected and dealt with at the edge of the cloud, closer to the location of the attack, which is a much more effective and less costly approach.

In addition to making service providers own cloud networks and services more resilient, this new solution also enables them to offer a cloud-based service to detect and mitigate DDoS attacks on the networks of their enterprise customers. This represents a lucrative revenue opportunity because many businesses do not have the skill-set or resources to keep up with this rapidly escalating threat on their own. Service providers can deliver denial-of-service 'scrubbing' as a cloud-based service from the same platform as virtual private network (VPN) and business Internet services, with minimal incremental investment.

"This partnership brings DDoS mitigation capabilities to the edge of provider networks and benefits them in multiple ways, from the cost saving benefits of reducing the volume of backhaul traffic to the ability to scale and generate additional revenue from managed security services," said Michael Suby, Stratecast Vice President of Research at Frost & Sullivan. "The demand for edge-based services also speaks to the complex challenges facing enterprise network administrators when it comes to DDoS and availability threats. They are increasingly looking to their service providers for managed solutions."

Kevin Macaluso, Vice President and General Manager of the IP Service Router Product Unit at Alcatel-Lucent, said: "Denial-of-service attacks are a rapidly growing problem in service provider and Enterprise networks today. Unchecked, they can bring down large networks and data centers for significant periods of time, which obviously has a detrimental impact on productivity and delivery of services. By integrating Arbor's TMS into our IP service routers, we're essentially moving the defensive perimeter further out to the 'edge' of the service provider's network – in effect stopping criminals at the border."

After being first-to-market with application level monitoring and control functionality for business networks in a carrier class service router, Alcatel-Lucent has raised the bar even higher by being first to integrate Arbor Networks TMS capabilities in the same integrated service adapter platform. This fully aligns with Alcatel-Lucent's High Leverage Network™ vision, which allows service providers to consolidate and converge their infrastructure, thus reducing CAPEX and OPEX, while speeding time to market for new services that leverage and extract more value from their network. The solution also complements Alcatel-Lucent's recently announced CloudBand solution which makes the carrier cloud possible through the dynamic orchestration and provision of cloud services, such as threat management, delivery of latency sensitive applications and guaranteed Quality of Service.

"More than sixty service providers offer some sort of clean pipe managed service built off the Arbor platform. By embedding our Threat Management System software into the Alcatel-Lucent 7750 Service Router, these service providers can scale their DDoS traffic cleaning service to capitalize on accelerating enterprise demand for cloud-based protection from DDoS attacks," said Colin Doherty, President of Arbor Networks.

The combined solution is available today and is currently in trials with more than 20 service providers worldwide. For more information visit: www.alcatel-lucent.com/ddos-protection.

About Arbor Networks

Arbor Networks, Inc. is a leading provider of network security and management solutions for next-generation data centers and carrier networks, including the majority of the world's Internet service providers and many of the largest enterprise networks in use today. Arbor's proven network security and management solutions help grow and protect customer networks, businesses and brands. Through its unparalleled, privileged relationships with worldwide service providers and global network operators, Arbor provides unequalled insight into and perspective on Internet security and traffic trends via the Active Threat Level Analysis System (ATLAS®). Representing a unique collaborative effort with 100+ network operators across the globe, ATLAS enables the sharing of real-time security, traffic and routing information that informs numerous business decisions.

For technical insight into the latest security threats and Internet traffic trends, please visit our website at http://www.arbornetworks.com/ and our blog at http://ddos.arbor.net/.

About Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris andNYSE: ALU)

The long-trusted partner of service providers, enterprises and governments around the world, Alcatel-Lucent is a leading innovator in the field of networking and communications technology, products and services. The company is home to Bell Labs, one of the world's foremost R&D organizations, responsible for breakthroughs that have shaped the networking and communications industry. Alcatel-Lucent is committed to making communications more sustainable, more affordable and more accessible as we pursue our mission - Realizing the Potential of a Connected World.

With operations in more than 130 countries and one of the most experienced global services organizations in the industry, Alcatel-Lucent is a local partner with global reach. The Company achieved revenues of Euro 16 billion in 2010 and is incorporated in France and headquartered in Paris.

For more information, visit Alcatel-Lucent on: http://www.alcatel-lucent.com, read the latest posts on the Alcatel-Lucent blog http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/blog and follow the Company on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Alcatel_Lucent.

SOURCE Alcatel-Lucent