Global Service providers and their customers are facing growing problems. They are now required to protect their network and computing infrastructures from attack by amateurs, malicious intruders, industrial spies, cyber-criminals, and potential cyber-terrorists. The 2004 E-Crime Watch survey of security and law enforcement executives by CSO magazine, the U.S Secret Service, and the CERT Coordination Center found an increase in e-crimes and network, system, or data intrusions over 2011. According to the survey, 50 percent of respondents reported an increase in e-crimes and intrusions over the previous year, and 80 percent reported at least one e-crime or intrusion was committed against their organization. Moreover, survey respondents estimate that e-crime cost their organizations approximately $3.0 billion in 2011 alone. Beyond actual losses, corporations in the United States and abroad now face legal liabilities if they fail to ensure the availability of their networks and protect the privacy of business and personal data.
Network vulnerability has increased since the Internet shifted from restricted access and availability to unlimited access from anywhere, at any time. Furthermore, the base IP protocols like TCP and UDP as well as supporting technologies such as DNS and the BGP routing protocol deployed in the Internet’s “Age of Innocence” were not developed with security in mind, and the complexity of modern systems and software has resulted in implementation errors that can be exploited by attackers.
