Global Fingerprint Sharing Alliance Doubles to Reduce Botnet and Zero-Day Threats; New Members Include Cable & Wireless and XS4ALL, among Others

Business Wire, Oct 26, 2005

LEXINGTON, Mass. -- Arbor Networks, a leader in network security, today announced that the global Fingerprint Sharing Alliance continues to gain significant momentum since its launch six months ago. The alliance has doubled in size to 32 members and the most recent companies to join include: Cable & Wireless, Liberty Lake Internet Exchange, Switch Communications Group, and XS4ALL.

First announced in March of 2005, Fingerprint Sharing Alliance is a first-of-its-kind industry initiative aimed at helping network operators share Internet attack information automatically. The Fingerprint Sharing Alliance enables companies to share detailed attack profiles in real-time and to block attacks closer to the source. As global infrastructure attacks become more distributed and diffused, communication between service providers needs to happen faster and more efficiently to better protect the Internet, businesses, and residential broadband users.

"Cyber attacks can paralyze even the most well structured network for days, costing millions of dollars in lost sales, freezing online services and crippling a company's reputation," said Jack Boyle, CEO of Arbor Networks. "By doubling the membership of the Fingerprint Sharing Alliance, real-time cooperation between service providers is available around the globe to identify a compromised or infected system -- allowing providers to consistently protect their enterprise customers from zero-day threats."

The growing number of members signifies the important role the alliance has in fighting Internet attacks and major infrastructure threats that cross network boundaries, continents and oceans. The Fingerprint Sharing Alliance replaces a formerly laborious and tedious process with an efficient and automated one that enables a larger community to engage and collaborate for a common cause. By sharing cyber attack profiles, or "fingerprints" to stop attacks more quickly and closer to the source, the global Fingerprint Sharing Alliance provides a solution to traceback and clean up infected machines that are being used to launch the attacks.

"As a leading international communications company with customers in over 80 countries, security across our network is integral," said Mark Hanvey, Chief Security Officer of Cable & Wireless. "Cyber attacks are increasing in complexity and frequency and it is essential that the security industry as a whole have a rapid way of sharing attack information in order to protect both customers and infrastructure. The Fingerprint Sharing Alliance will arm us with the information to thwart cyber attacks quicker and to rapidly share the attack information with other alliance members."

Global infrastructure attacks, such as denial of service (DoS) attacks and worms, are becoming more distributed and diffused, creating the need for better communication between companies to help stop these attacks. In the recently released Arbor Networks' Worldwide ISP Security Report (http://www.arbor.net/sp_security_report.php) Internet service providers reported tracking botnet armies that reached 20,000 infected computer hosts. These botnets are being used by criminals for phishing and pharming attacks and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, the survey found.

Public Membership Roster

Some of the largest telecommunications companies in the world are members of the Fingerprint Sharing Alliance, including:

--Asia Netcom

--British Telecom

--Broadwing

--Cable & Wireless

--Cisco Systems

--Earthlink

--Energis

--Internet2

--ITC DeltaCom

--Liberty Lake Internet Exchange

--MCI

--Merit Network

--NTT Communications

--University of Pennsylvania

--Switch Communications Group

--The Planet

--Rackspace Managed Hosting

--Utah Educational Networks

--Verizon Dominicana

--WilTel Communications

--XO Communications

--XS4ALL

To find out more about the Fingerprint Sharing Alliance, please go to: http://www.arbor.net/fingerprint-sharing-alliance.php.> ABOUT ARBOR NETWORKS

Arbor Networks ensures the security and operational integrity of the world's most critical networks. Arbor's solutions are based on the proven Peakflow platform, intelligent technology for network-wide data collection, analysis, anomaly detection, and threat mitigation. Peakflow provides real-time views of network activity enabling organizations to instantly protect against worms, DDoS attacks, insider misuse, and traffic and routing instability, as well as segment and harden networks from future threats. Peakflow successfully prevents costly downtime, network cleanup, and loss of customer confidence. Arbor is headquartered in Lexington, MA, with a research and development office in Ann Arbor, MI and overseas headquarters in London and Beijing.

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