Operators are leaving their networks and users unprotected
Mobile operators in Europe are largely unequipped to detect internal malicious content on their networks, according to Cloudmark CEO Hugh McCartney.
McCartney delivered his warning as his company launched Mobile Authority, a package of measures designed to help mobile operators protect themselves from unwanted messaging content and spam.
Although spam is still at relatively low levels in the mature markets of Western Europe, and most virus and worm attacks are at the “proof of concept stage”, McCartney said operators need to protect themselves – as a major attack, or growing levels of spam, could have severe consequences – including poorer network performance and increased customer churn. “It’s less about the volume, and more about the threat,” he said.
Mobile Authority has three elements, with the core software element being a content detection capability, which McCartney said would boost operators’ ability to protect themselves against potential threats.
McCartney sadi that one problem facing operators is that although they may have spoofing and faking protection at the edge of their networks, their partner networks may not be as well protected. And traffic from partner networks is then accepted onto the network as trusted content.
“I speak to southern European operators who say that every day they receive millions of unwanted spam messages from northern European operators, yet those same T1 northern operators are completely unaware they have a problem,” he said.
“Mobile operators do not have the ability to do content protections, to stop internal threats of unwanted and abusive content,” he added.
The content detection element of Mobile Authority allows operators to inspect which messages might be a problem, and to take action. A “bad” url contained within a message can be blocked within 45 seconds of detection, for instance.
The second and third elements of Mobile Authority are the ability to rate the reputation of a sender of messages, and consultancy and analysis services. Reputation rating is done by fingerprinting messages, building up a host of data on a source, so that the operator can then apply policies to that source.
Cloudmark works with messaging infrastructure partners such as Airwide and Acision, as well as dealing direct with operators. It claims that its software can deal with messages that are sent to it in real time, although it does not actually sit in the signaling flow of the messages.