Sprint today announced two new initiatives to further
protect its network customers from malicious attacks.
Sprint’s IP Defender and Secure Content Management and Filtering service
are both intended to help mitigate excessive bandwidth usage.
IP Defender provides 24/7 monitoring of customer traffic and identifies
suspected anomalies before they become bigger problems.
“What we saw is that there is a new form of attack where basically a machine
will grab onto a port and cause it to send millions of messages causing it
to crash or preventing people from getting into it,” Mickey O’Dell, Sprint product
manager, told internetnews.com. “What [IP Defender] does is monitors the port,
and if it sees something strange going on, it’ll actually divert that port
into a ‘dumping ground.'”
O’Dell added that the new service actually re-routes the suspected DoS
traffic to a dead-end whereas what Sprint did before was usually just take
down the affected port.
Sprint’s Secure Content Management and Filtering service is also about
proactively optimizing customer bandwidth. Through the use of security rules,
productivity controls and content caching, the service promises to lower
bandwidth costs while improving Internet access and security for
customers.
“We offer the protection customers need against today’s threats,” explained
Tim Donahue, assistant vice president of Segment Marketing at Sprint, in a
statement. “Security is inherent in everything we do, and we are committed
to providing our customers with comprehensive multilayer security solutions
at all locations.”
Sprint’s network recently got a vote of confidence from Time Warner Cable
of New York and New Jersey. Last week,
TWC unveiled
its new VoIP service, which runs on the Sprint network.