Cyber security in the 100/25GbE High-Density data center era

As data center operators continue to demand greater bandwidth, the migration from 100G to 400G will be the next vital step in data center architecture. GSMA predicts that by 2025, there will be 25 billion connected devices. As this immense growth unfolds for mobile operators, ISPs, enterprises, and the wider industry, new demands are forcing them to evolve their networks quickly – creating highly complex, multi-layer architectures. An important part of this infrastructure is cyber security, more specifically network security. 100GbE technologies started in the core and have now migrated all the way to the multi-service edge routers and switches.

In order to protect mega-scale data centers, the defenders must have visibility of what is happening on their networks at all times.

Telesoft Technologies has announced the latest phase of its compact 1U FlowProbe appliance, which now runs at 4×100GbE (up from 2×100GbE). FlowProbe 4×100GbE monitors networks in real time at an ultra-high performance level to diagnose issues, detect anomalies, and maintain security. It is the first product of its kind on the market today. This is achieved using detailed unsampled traffic data in the form of flow records from large-scale networks.

FlowProbe 4×100GbE is ideal for large-scale national network deployments, data center backbones, and peering links. As the arrival of 5G networks brings faster download speeds and broader security issues, data-hungry technologies like Internet of Things (IoT), cloud, and blockchain demand higher bandwidth rates, shaping the future adoption of higher-capacity data centers. FlowProbe 4×100GbE enables organisations in high-density cyber environments to safeguard and future-proof themselves in the face of the Big Data explosion.

This evolution of our FlowProbe 4×100GbE comes at a pivotal time, as sensitive critical national infrastructure (CNI) continues to be compromised across Asia, plus the volume and sophistication of attacks continues to grow exponentially. The sheer size and scale of telecommunication and large enterprise environments pose unique cyber challenges that other security solutions simply cannot cope with. Without a system designed to combat these specific challenges and the levels of data present, organisations are left to make do with legacy solutions, hoping they would not crack under the strain.

That is why some of the world’s largest network operators, data center warehouses, and government organisations trust our highly scalable network visibility tools for incident response, traffic capture, and real-time threat detection at scale in networks running at multiples of 100Gbps. Mobile networks, for example, play a central role in people’s daily life, facilitating communication and economic growth; for this reason, they are often the target or relentless cyberattacks. Now, FlowProbe 4×100GbE super-charges mobile network security to an unprecedented level.

Unsampled flow-based monitoring gives network analysts detailed and accurate information about every communication session, including endpoint identities, session start and end times, and the volume of traffic transmitted. This gives full traffic visibility, enhancing analysis, network performance monitoring and diagnostics (NPMD), and compliance.

Telesoft FlowProbe 4×100GbE identifies Layer-7 protocols and extracts key information into flow records crucially, without affecting the monitored traffic:

HTTP flows are detected on any port, and the host, uniform resource identifier (URI), method and status fields extracted and included in the flow record.
SSL flows have the server name extracted and included in the flow record.
DNS flows are detected and the canonical name record or alias record (CNAME) and host addresses added to the flow record.
BGP correlation of IP address to AS is added to the flow record.