How Mobile Operators Feel About Their Cyber Attack Risk


In the recent Light Reading webinar “Dealing with DDoS Application Threats in Mobile Networks,” Senior Heavy Reading Analyst Patrick Donegan and I discussed the increased frequency of application-based attacks in the mobile network. Leveraging Heavy Reading survey data and pointing to real examples, we sought to demonstrate just how vulnerable the network and mobile devices can become to DDoS attacks, especially as LTE scales. The mobile network operations engineers and their threat detection and mitigation capabilities need to evolve from wireline to wireless to protect their network assets and the user experience of their customers.

Patrick shared some excellent research indicating that 47% of mobile operators in developed markets (North America, Western Europe, Japan, Australia) are experiencing two or more outage or degradation events, lasting an hour or more, based on malicious attacks.

Think about that.  The gold standard that all carriers are striving for is 99.999% service availability – this translates to no more than 5 seconds of downtime a year.  Two or more hours of outage or service degradation shows just how far wireless networks must increase their security to reach the “5 9s” standard.

Since you can’t fight what you don’t see, behavioral analytics engines that can correlate application behavior into normal, suspect, and attack modes are critical to solving the security gap.  Eighty percent of the webinar attendees agreed and responded that real time behavioral analytics are very relevant to protecting against DDOS attacks.

Listen to the discussion here:

  • 94% of attendees responded that it taught them about the subject
  • 72% responded they are more likely to buy Radware based on this webinar

The DDoS landscape has rapidly evolved in the last few years and attackers have become much more sophisticated.  For even more on this, I invite you to read the “Automating Defenses Against Increasingly Sophisticated DDoS Attacks” whitepaper to learn more about the changing landscape as well as the need for fast and fine-grained automatic mitigation solutions.

Mike O'Malley

Mike O’Malley brings 20 years of experience in strategy, product and business development, marketing, M&A and executive management to Radware. Currently, Mr. O’Malley is the Vice President of Carrier Strategy and Business Development for Radware. In this role, he is responsible for leading strategic initiatives for wireless, wireline and cloud service providers. Mr. O’Malley has extensive experience developing innovative products and strategies in technology businesses including security, cloud and wireless. Prior to Radware, Mr. O’Malley held various executive management positions leading growing business units at Tellabs, VASCO and Ericsson. Mr. O’Malley holds a Master of Business Administration degree, a Master of Science in electrical engineering, and a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois. He also is a graduate of the Executive Strategy Programs at the University of Chicago.

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