By: Amr
Alashaal, Regional Vice President - Middle East at A10 Networks
2020 was a year that
changed the world as we know it. The global pandemic revolutionized our work
lives as remote working became the norm and this trend is expected to continue
into the future. For communication service providers, the pandemic brought about
challenges but also opportunities for growth – provided they are cognizant of
customer demand and use patterns and adjust two key success factors – scale and
DDoS security.
Clearly, a return to
pre-pandemic working practices is unlikely to happen. To learn more about the
impact on networks and cyber security that COVID-19 has had on service
providers, A10 Networks commissioned a survey and the results
from the Middle East provide interesting insights. A large proportion of the
senior IT professionals that we surveyed were adamant that the workplace won’t
snap back to how it was before COVID-19, and that they expect and are preparing
for a hybrid approach to working practices. The pandemic significantly raised
awareness around the resiliency of the network and the robustness of security,
and going forward, subscribers and enterprises expect much stronger security
from their communications service providers and will demand more in their SLAs
and expand to other types of service providers to get this commitment.
Increase in Customer
Demand
Without a doubt,
COVID-19 has had a significant impact with 99 percent of all Middle East respondents
having experienced an increase in demand. There is a lot of work to be done by
SPs in the Middle East as they lag behind their compatriots in other markets in
terms of scaling up network infrastructure in response to increased demand for
data and network bandwidth from customers.
Distributed
Environment
Ninety-nine percent of
all Middle Eastern service provider respondents said that COVID-19 has
accelerated their transition to a more distributed environment. Middle East
communication service providers are seeing increased demand from different
locations, and this has forced them to redistribute network capacity and scale
up in specific locations.
Cyber Security/DDoS
Security Concerns
The research
highlighted the extent to which communications service providers are concerned
about DDoS attacks and the need to mitigate them. Overall, it underlined that
many communications service providers are vulnerable and, as a result of
COVID-19, more are now investing in security in order to reinforce their defences.
One of the big cyber
security challenges brought about by the pandemic with the ‘work from home’
scenario is that it has caused rapid expansion of the attack surface. Fifty-one
percent of Middle East service providers have accelerated investment plans in security
and this is a relatively low figure considering security, primarily DDoS
security, should be a priority for every service provider. They have said that
they would need additional capabilities and technologies to protect their
customers’ networks from cyber-attacks in the next two years. DDoS protection
is a big concern.
It is a fact that
multi-vector DDoS attacks are increasing in frequency and volume, severely
impacting businesses across the globe. Defending infrastructure, servers,
application and users’ access during DDoS attacks can’t be accomplished by
existing firewalls, intrusion prevention systems, and load balancers. In fact,
in many instances, these systems are the target of attacks because they are
vulnerable and can be overwhelmed by a flood of unwanted traffic. As
communications service providers evolve with digital transformation and a
cloud-native deployment model, they should prioritize applying more rigor to
their security strategy — with up-to-date thinking and techniques — to address
longstanding vulnerabilities.
The Impact of COVID-19
on Relationships and Investment Plans
As per the report, it is a mixed bag when
it comes to investment. For the Middle East, the majority of respondents have
planned to increase investment in security within the next three years due to
the increase in traffic/ subscribers (51%). It is interesting that more than
half the respondents in the Middle East plan to reduce investment in their own
network and accelerate use of public cloud providers, while others plan to
increase investment in networks (43%).
In terms of future
investment plans, going forward providers are keen to ensure DDoS security
across the network infrastructure – solutions like DDoS and ransomware
protection services for enterprise customers and upgrading firewalls and other
security appliances feature heavily in the plans.
Concerns Around
Outages, Compliance and Multi-cloud Environments
When it comes to the
diversity of environments, providers are concerned that they can continue to
deliver a good level of service, so outages are top of mind, followed by
granular visibility of traffic. Compliance with regulatory requirements for
privacy and security was a joint third with maintaining consistent subscriber
experience.
To learn more about
the survey findings, you can download the full report here.
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