Re: The Backhoe: A Real Cyberthreat? [ & Re: cyber-redundancy ]
Imagine if 60 Hudson and 111 8th were to go down at the same time? Finding means to mitigate this threat is not frivolously spending the taxpayer's money,
This is not only a fair question, it's the very dilemma that some of us faced during and immediately following September 11, 2001 when laying down routes into NJ and north to midtown from the Wall Street area of NY City held new challenges. The attacks on that grim date and its after effects revealed that sites no longer had necessarily to be "taken down" in the traditional sense, per se, to be inaccessible. It was no longer only the physical integrity of building property and underground infrastructure that was vulnerable, but the very "access" to those facilities from a broader geographic footprint perspective, as well, was seen as something new that had to be dealt with. To answer Sean Donelan's question, yes, enterprise customers and/or their agents _do _need to have specific information on the routes in which their leased facilities (and even dark fiber builds) are placed, ephemeral as those data might be at times due to SP outside plant churn. They need this data in order to ensure that they're not only getting the diversity/redundancy/separacy that they're paying for, but because of the more fundamental reason being that it is the only way they have to provide maximal assurances to stakeholders of the organization's survivability. All of that having been said, up-to-date information on physical routes and common spaces and the cables that reside within them remains among the most problematic and opaque issues that enterprise network builders and SPs alike have to deal with today in their quest to design and manage survivable networks. NDAs aren't going away, and the anal nature of carriers isn't about to change anytime soon. The best information gathering approach to double check any information that "is" provided is very often knowing the right people to ask on an official level, and being patient enough to wait for the right moment to ask. Frank
On Fri, 20 Jan 2006, Frank Coluccio wrote:
To answer Sean Donelan's question, yes, enterprise customers and/or their agents _do _need to have specific information on the routes in which their leased facilities (and even dark fiber builds) are placed, ephemeral as those data might be at times due to SP outside plant churn. They need this data in order to ensure that they're not only getting the diversity/redundancy/separacy that they're paying for, but because of the more fundamental reason being that it is the only way they have to provide maximal assurances to stakeholders of the organization's survivability.
Is the same thing also true for customers of financial institutions? Why are financial institutions so reluctant to give details about the locations of their data centers, processing offices, money transport routes and security procedures to their customers? Don't customers of financial institutions have the same concerns about the survivability of the financial institutions as the financial institutions have about their suppliers? Doesn't this just turn into Y2K all over again with every organization demanding guarantees and copies of data from every other organization?
The difference being the financial system can use the knowledge to make themselves more resilient. How does the bank customer use the information you listed to make themselves more resilient? Further, the banks are a fairly trusted and well regulated group. There are a good number of bank customers that are not good guys. Is there a fear the banks will use provider information for malicious ends? Is that the reason the providers will not give the information? Could it be they do not want customers to know most of their SONET rings are collapsed? ----- Original Message ----- From: Sean Donelan <sean@donelan.com> Date: Friday, January 20, 2006 4:44 pm Subject: Re: The Backhoe: A Real Cyberthreat? [ & Re: cyber-redundancy ]
To answer Sean Donelan's question, yes, enterprise customers and/or their agents _do _need to have specific information on the routes in which
facilities (and even dark fiber builds) are placed, ephemeral as
be at times due to SP outside plant churn. They need this data in order to ensure that they're not only getting the diversity/redundancy/separacy
paying for, but because of the more fundamental reason being
way they have to provide maximal assurances to stakeholders of
On Fri, 20 Jan 2006, Frank Coluccio wrote: their leased those data might that they're that it is the only the organization's
survivability.
Is the same thing also true for customers of financial institutions? Why are financial institutions so reluctant to give details about the locations of their data centers, processing offices, money transport routes and security procedures to their customers? Don't customers of financial institutions have the same concerns about the survivability of the financial institutions as the financial institutions have about their suppliers?
Doesn't this just turn into Y2K all over again with every organization demanding guarantees and copies of data from every other organization?
participants (3)
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Frank Coluccio
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Sean Donelan
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sgorman1@gmu.edu