About The Security Of Your Core Business Network

The roots of technology, especially in the telecommunications industry, go back as far as 1837 with the introduction of the morse-code telegraph over copper wires. Prior to that a written message would need to be handed to a horseman who would dash across the countryside ...

On a personal level, I haven't been involved that long, as I joined the industry in 1993 selling early Intel 286-based Amstrad computers and the original brick-like mobile phones. It really was a brave new world and set the foundations for a long and distinguished career.

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I recently had the pleasure of visiting Adastral Park in Martlesham, home to BT's world-famous Research, Invention, Innovation and Development Centre where services such as fibre optics and holographic technologies were developed and brought to the world.

"My visit was organised by The Institute of Telecommunications Professionals (ITP) to understand how BT is tackling Cyber Security!"

For the past decade, Cyber Crime has become the number one threat to businesses and it has been the job of either outsourced IT companies or internal IT directors/managers to secure data networks through correct configuration of routers, managed switches and firewalls.

Controlling the deployment of more and more IP-based equipment like phones, Wi-Fi, CCTV, and IoT devices that are constantly connected has escalated matters where there is an increased danger that the ports on a router or passwords on connected devices need to be triple secure. Done correctly, nothing externally can ping your devices looking for a route into your network.

So, my trip to Martlesham labs was to see and hear what BT, being the UK's largest infrastructure and Internet provider in the UK, are doing about stopping or limiting the number of cyber attacks from within their core internet network so that hackers can't get through to your networks in the first instance.

For starters, the cyber research team are deploying a wide range of software solutions and vast amounts of data processing to look for millions of dodgy domain names and weed these out for the legitimate ones.

Unfortunately, this is an unregulated market and hackers (as well as everyday people) can register a domain in about a minute! Domain name spoofing is also a tactic used by hackers to try and redirect you to an illegal website.

Would you spot the difference between Google.com and Gooogle.com if you were clicking a link in email? Domain names are the foundation of email addresses and quite literally billions of emails are sent and received daily.

"You physically can't scan them all for minute differences every single second of the day!"

Using email security software does help with damage limitation, but again, ISPs such as BT need to somehow curb the flow of attacks by building up databases of IP addresses, spoof email and domain names so as to prevent hackers from passing the core networks. It is an arduous task.

My trip to Martlesham was certainly eye-opening, so for now, I strongly recommend you get your business defences in order and ask your internal or external IT department to lock down networks and batten down the hatches as much as possible.

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It's always better to be safe than sorry.

If you feel inspired to find out more then do call me on 07555 807700 or leave a comment below and I'll be in touch as soon as I can.