NETSCOUT
SYSTEMS, INC., (NASDAQ: NTCT), a leading provider of service
assurance, security, and business analytics, announced today that it is
partnering with the University of Massachusetts Lowell (UMass
Lowell) to protect the university’s
network from cyber attacks. NETSCOUT is donating NETSCOUT
Arbor Edge Defense (AED) software and hardware to the university’s
IT department. Using highly-scalable stateless packet processing
technology, NETSCOUT AED acts as a network perimeter enforcement point,
where it detects and blocks inbound cyber threats and outbound malicious
communication in bulk, acting as the first and last line of perimeter
defense for an organization.
“At UMass Lowell, our network is constantly being scanned for attacks,
threatening everything from research to human resources and payroll,”
said Jim Packard, UMass Lowell’s chief information security officer. “We
realized we needed better DDoS protection and determined that NETSCOUT’s
Arbor Edge Defense solution was best-in-breed. Right out of the box,
this solution provides far more than just DDoS protection, making it a
perfect fit for our purposes and a critical element in our suite of
security measures. Higher education is not immune from attacks, which is
why AED’s first and last line of defense capabilities are exactly what
we needed.”
NETSCOUT Arbor Edge Defense (AED)
NETSCOUT AED is an always-on, in-line solution which can be deployed as
a physical appliance or virtual network function. It sits outside the
firewall, between the enterprise or data center and the internet. A
unique stateless packet processing engine provides efficient blocking of
DDoS attacks and other malicious traffic matching Indicators of
Compromise (IoCs) without tracking any session state. As a result,
NETSCOUT AED can make other perimeter defenses more effective by
shielding them from DDoS attacks, and offloading the overhead associated
with applying millions of IoCs to traffic streams.
NETSCOUT AED leverages the company’s proven market-leading DDoS
technology that is already trusted by thousands of enterprises
worldwide. As a result, it provides advanced packet-based protection
against complex application-specific DDoS attacks and state-exhaustion
techniques; as well as defenses against internet scale threats,
neutralizing the malware families that make up the global botnet threat.
Armed with millions of reputation-based IoCs, NETSCOUT’s stateless
packet processing engine can also detect and block outbound
communication from internal compromised hosts that have been missed by
other devices in the security stack; helping to stop further
proliferation of malware and other tactics used within crimeware and
advanced threat campaigns.
“As student interaction and testing are increasingly done online,
universities across the country, and around the world, are facing many
of the same cyber-security challenges encountered by businesses and
government agencies,” said Carlos Morales, NETSCOUT’s vice president and
general manager of DDoS Mitigation Services. “UMass Lowell has a great
program in place to ensure network security, and it recognized that
NETSCOUT’s innovative, market-leading Smart DDoS technology can help
further harden the network against DDoS and other internet bound
threats. Partnering with the university’s IT team not only helps protect
the university’s vitally important network, it also provides NETSCOUT
with invaluable feedback and sharing of threat intelligence. This will,
in turn, help us evolve our solutions to better help other universities
and higher education programs.”
As part of the partnership, UMass Lowell has committed to share
indicator data based on what NETSCOUT AED blocks providing NETSCOUT with
insights into what kinds of threats are targeting the university. This
data will not contain IP addresses or any other personal information.
NETSCOUT will also gain feedback from periodic user experience studies
on installed devices.
Operationalizing Threat Intelligence
NETSCOUT has the ability to enable security and network teams to connect
and correlate unique intelligence on emerging internet threats and
trends, with visibility into what is happening across their internal
organization from a threat perspective. This is a core component of
NETSCOUT’s Smart DDoS strategy. NETSCOUT’s Active Threat Level Analysis
System (ATLAS®), collects, prioritizes, and disseminates data on
emerging threats based on our unique visibility into over one-third of
all internet traffic. The
ATLAS Security Engineering & Response Team (ASERT) is
continuously and automatically delivering high fidelity threat
intelligence via the ATLAS
Intelligence Feed, enabling customers to not only block threats in
real-time but enhance their defenses over time.
NETSCOUT’s robust threat intelligence not only identifies an attack, but
also provides high-value context, such as the attack infrastructure,
methods, and related indicators that enable organizations to make faster
security decisions with greater confidence. NETSCOUT AED supports
standards such as STIX/TAXII for ingestion of third-party threat
intelligence and provides a robust REST API to integrate threat
detection and blocking telemetry, and contextual threat intelligence
into existing SOC workflows and management tools.
About UMass Lowell
UMass Lowell is a national research university located on a high-energy
campus in the heart of a global community. The university offers its
more than 18,000 students bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in
business, education, engineering, fine arts, health, humanities,
sciences and social sciences. UMass Lowell delivers high-quality
educational programs, vigorous hands-on learning and personal attention
from leading faculty and staff, all of which prepare graduates to be
leaders in their communities and around the globe. www.uml.edu
About NETSCOUT
NETSCOUT SYSTEMS, INC. (NASDAQ: NTCT) assures digital business services
against disruptions in availability, performance, and security. Our
market and technology leadership stems from combining our patented smart
data technology with smart analytics. We provide real-time, pervasive
visibility, and insights customers need to accelerate and secure their
digital transformation. Our approach transforms the way organizations
plan, deliver, integrate, test, and deploy services and applications.
Our nGenius service assurance solutions provide real-time, contextual
analysis of service, network, and application performance. Arbor
security solutions help protect against DDoS attacks that threaten
availability and advanced threats that infiltrate networks to steal
critical business assets. To learn more about improving service,
network, and application performance in physical or virtual data
centers, or in the cloud, and how NETSCOUT’s performance and security
solutions, powered by service intelligence can help you move forward
with confidence, visit http://www.netscout.com or
follow @NETSCOUT and @ArborNetworks on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.
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