ACADEMIA

Leading service providers and organizations worldwide today demonstrated a unified commitment to share detailed network attack profiles through a Fingerprint Sharing Alliance, announced separately today by Arbor Networks. The Fingerprint Sharing Alliance marks the first time companies are able to share detailed attack information in real-time and block attacks closer to the source. This global alliance marks a significant step forward in the fight against Internet attacks and major infrastructure threats that cross network boundaries, continents and oceans. Lost revenue and repair costs from attacks on networked services and disruptions in 2005 are expected to exceed $17.5 billion, up from $13.2 billion in 2003, according to Computer Economics, Inc. Supporting the Fingerprint Sharing Alliance is a wide range of network operators and providers from around the globe. Organizations include Asia Netcom, British Telecom, Broadwing, Cisco, EarthLink, Internet2, ITC^DeltaCom, MCI, Merit Network, The Planet, University of Pennsylvania, Utah Educational Network, and Rackspace. Asia Netcom, a leading Asia-based telecommunications carrier and wholly-owned subsidiary of China Netcom: "The Fingerprint Sharing Alliance provides both automation and flexibility in communicating attack information and profiles with upstream providers," said Wilfred Kwan, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Asia Netcom. "Not only does this yield more reliable service for our customers, but it also helps us to contribute to the overall integrity and safety of the Internet by quickly communicating with other providers." British Telecom, one of Europe's leading providers of telecommunications services: "Providers like BT spend a lot of time and resources protecting the integrity and availability of their networks to deliver the services our customers expect of us," said Dave Harcourt, Head of Network Security in BT Wholesale. "The Fingerprint Sharing Alliance is a great complement to this because it enables providers to quickly share information on attacks across global networks. This is very empowering to any service provider because it facilitates a community for providers to get at the source of attack traffic and minimize the impact it has on everyone's networks and services." Broadwing Communications, LLC, a provider of innovative data, voice, and media solutions to enterprises, service providers and government entities: "At Broadwing, we are continually enhancing our network infrastructure to more effectively detect, isolate, and mitigate Internet security threats," said John McLeod, Senior Vice President of Network Operations at Broadwing Communications. "The Fingerprint Sharing Alliance provides us another mechanism to respond more quickly and more effectively to these threats. This is a great example of the service provider community working together to ensure that the Internet remains an effective network for business and consumer applications." Cisco Systems, Inc., the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet: "Cisco has worked with Arbor in the early testing of fingerprint sharing," said Bob Gleichauf, vice president and CTO of the Security Technology Group (STG) at Cisco Systems. "Through the involvement of Cisco NetFlow technology, Cisco and Arbor are helping customers significantly minimize business disruption from Internet attacks, worms, and viruses. We are pleased to be participating in this worldwide, cooperative program to help stop cyber attacks and to help better protect our customers. By sharing attack information with providers around the globe, we will ultimately help make the Internet a safer place." EarthLink (NASDAQ: ELNK), the nation's next generation Internet Service Provider: "Eliminating online threats and nuisances so consumers can safely enjoy all the Internet has to offer is a key tenet for EarthLink," said Greg Collins, director of networking engineer and operations, EarthLink. "Fingerprint Sharing helps ensure our subscribers have an ideal Internet experience." Internet2, foremost U.S. advanced networking consortium lead by the research and higher education community: "Building a more secure, more robust Internet can only be achieved through a collaborative, multi-tiered approach involving industry, government, and academia. By bringing together key stakeholder groups for trusted, real-time information sharing on threats and attacks, the Fingerprint Sharing Alliance represents a significant advance towards enhancing the security of the global Internet," said Steve Corbato, Director of Network Initiatives at Internet2. "Internet2's participation in the Fingerprint Alliance is an extension of our ongoing collaboration with our corporate sponsor Arbor Networks to implement leading-edge attack detection and response capabilities over Internet2's high performance Abilene network. We believe the Alliance can help enable a new level of awareness across traditional provider boundaries and that the highly collaborative nature of Internet2's advanced networking community is conducive to demonstrating these new capabilities." ITCDeltaCom, Inc., a leading provider of integrated communications services to customers in the southeastern United States: "We are pleased to participate in Arbor's trusted Fingerprint Sharing Alliance," said Jim O'Brien, ITC^DeltaCom Executive Vice President of Operations. "As telecom providers and ISPs continue to be challenged with defending networks against DDoS and other attacks, it is in everyone's best interest to share details about these attacks as they happen. This will ultimately enable us all to achieve the highest level of service quality for our customers." MCI, Inc., one of the world's leading global communications companies: "MCI brings an unparalleled view into Internet security events around the globe," said Mark Sitko, vice president of MCI Security Services Product Management. "As a member of the Fingerprint Sharing Alliance, the Internet community at large will benefit from MCI's robust sources of security information, award-winning expertise and ongoing commitment to securing networks for our customers." Merit Network, the longest-running regional research and education network in the U.S.: "In supporting the networking needs of Michigan's universities, K-12 schools, community colleges, libraries, state government, health care, and other non-profit organizations, the integrity and availability of our network is an absolute priority," said Michael McPherson, Interim President and CEO of Merit Network. "Merit has long recognized the critical importance of sharing information regarding the efficient and secure operation of networks. We fully support the Fingerprint Sharing Alliance as a means to cooperatively protect our statewide network against worms, denial of service and other attacks." The Planet, one of the fastest growing managed hosting providers in the United States: "We are very committed to delivering the most reliable and secure managed hosting services," said Ben Bradberry, vice president of Information Security at The Planet. "Arbor's Fingerprinting Alliance allows us to quickly share important details about an attack. The service helps us optimize bandwidth and maximize quality of service for our customers by providing us the critical information required to accurately filter attack traffic near the ingress points, stopping attacks closer to the source." University of Pennsylvania, Ivy-League university: "Sharing the right information quickly and efficiently among the networks affected can be the key to dealing with a large network-based attack. The University of Pennsylvania is very interested in the Fingerprint Sharing Alliance as a way to streamline this process, efficiently sharing details among network operations personnel who can act on them," said Deke Kassabian, senior technology director, University of Pennsylvania Networking & Telecommunications. "By working together within the Fingerprint Sharing Alliance, we have the opportunity to limit or stop more network-based attacks early on, before they can become major problems." Utah Education Network, state-wide educational network: "Our network is as essential as electricity. Any operational threat compromises our ability to deliver critical education, medical information, and data for our clients. Arbor Networks' Peakflow helps us detect and mitigate attacks. It provides our customers with an effective way to protect against denial-of-service attacks, worms, and hackers while keeping their networks running," said Michael Peterson, executive director, Utah Education Network. "Now, with Fingerprint Sharing, it makes it even easier to mitigate DDoS attacks." Rackspace Managed Hosting, the fastest-growing managed hosting provider for customers of all sizes - from start-ups to enterprise customers: "As a provider of enterprise managed hosting services, it is imperative that our customers' business-critical applications are not impacted by worms and denial of service attacks," said Paul Froutan, vice president of engineering of Rackspace Managed Hosting. "We've had tremendous success using Peakflow SP and this new Fingerprint Sharing Alliance gives us an even greater ability to defuse these attacks before they can impact our customers. By sharing information with other service providers, we help them identify and mitigate network anomalies and ultimately keep the Internet a safer place to work and play."