VIEWPOINT
IN THE NIC OF TIME BART SALAETS, SENIOR DIRECTOR OF SOLUTIONS ENGINEERING AT F5, ON THE IMPORTANCE OF NETWORK INTERFACE CARD (NIC).
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f you removed the case of your desktop computer back in the 1990s, one of the first things you’d see is a network interface card (NIC)—the component used for plugging your machine into an Ethernet cable. Unlikely as it may sound, the humble NIC is now set to help the telecoms industry, and its customers, combat a huge global surge in distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Among other things. Modern day NICs do much more than direct traffic. Now known as SmartNICs, this specialist hardware can help solve one of telcos’ biggest challenges: moving to a virtualised architecture that relies on industry 12
CXO INSIGHT ME
JANUARY 2021
standard servers controlled by CPUs (central processing units). Designed to support network functions in the cloud, these virtual machines are often ill-equipped to cope with major DDoS attacks where large numbers of devices request network resources at the same time. The CPUs would be quickly overwhelmed. Right now, these CPUs need more protection than ever. According to recent F5 Labs analysis of Security Incident Report (SIRT) data, DDoS attacks accounted for just a tenth of all reported customer incidents in January. By March, they had grown to three times that of all incidents. What’s more, 4.2% of DDoS attacks reported to the F5 SIRT last year were identified
as targeting web apps. This increased six-fold in 2020 to 26%. There are numerous other studies echoing these trends, and it is no mystery why it is happening. Remote working and people spending more time online has significantly heightened both risk levels and available attack surfaces. One way to protect yourself is to put a dedicated piece of kit, specifically designed to detect and mitigate DDoS attacks, in front of the virtual network. While that is still a viable option, it does reduce some of the cost advantages of going for a full virtual network. The dedicated appliances would also take up valuable space in the compact edge computing centres now being rolled out by telcos to reduce network latency.
