Washington, D.C. – 13
August, 2019 – The Mutually Agreed
Norms for Routing Security (MANRS) initiative, today announced the launch of
the MANRS
Observatory, a new online tool that measures the
level of networks’ compliance to MANRS, a key indicator of the state of routing
security and resiliency of the Internet.
Routing security is vital to the future
and stability of the Internet, but it’s under constant threat. In 2018, more
than 12,000 routing outages or attacks – such
as hijacking, leaks, and spoofing – led to stolen data, lost revenue,
reputational damage and more. Last year, a
routing leak by a Nigerian ISP caused
some of Google’s traffic to be misrouted through China resulting in outages in
many parts of the world and in June of this year, a massive route leak
knocked out large parts of the Internet offline for several hours.
MANRS, a global initiative, driven by the networking community and supported by
the Internet Society, aims to reduce the most common threats to the Internet’s
routing system through technical and collaborative action. Those who join MANRS
must implement specific measures to improve the resiliency and security of the
routing infrastructure to keep the Internet safe for businesses and consumers
alike.
The Observatory shows the degree of networks’ adherence to MANRS by tracking the number of routing incidents by region and by country and monitoring metrics for MANRS actions. The tool aggregates data from a number of trusted third-party sources into a user-friendly online dashboard. This snapshot enables network operators to identify problematic areas to help them improve the security of their networks.
Benefits of the MANRS
Observatory include:
- Performance Barometer: MANRS participants can easily
monitor how well they adhere to the requirements of this initiative and make
any necessary adjustments to their security controls. - Business Development: Participants can see how they and
their peers are performing. They can leverage the MANRS Observatory to
determine whether potential partners’ security practices are up to par. - Government: Policy makers can better understand the state
of routing security and resilience and help improve it by calling for MANRS
best practices. - Social Responsibility: MANRS implementation is simple,
voluntary and non-disruptive. The Observatory can help participants ensure they
and their peers are keeping their networks secure, which helps improve routing
security of the Internet as a whole.
“Routing security is based
almost entirely on trust between networks,” said Andrei Robachevsky, Senior
Technology Program Manager at the Internet Society. “One of the advantages of
the MANRS Observatory is that it adds an element of accountability. MANRS is
seeing steady adoption, but we need more networks to implement the actions and
more customers to demand routing security best practices. The more network operators
applying MANRS actions, the fewer incidents happening, the less damage done.
Our hope is that the MANRS Observatory will help drive greater participation,”
he added.
MANRS membership is growing.
Today, there are 201 Network Operators (ISPs) and 34 Internet Exchange Points
(IXPs) committed to improving Internet security. MANRS participants include
network operators from small regional ISPs to Tier-1 carrier networks, from
university networks to major content and cloud providers all over the
world. Notable MANRS newcomers include
Microsoft and Google. To find out more, please
visit https://www.manrs.org.
About the Internet Society
Founded by Internet pioneers, the Internet Society (ISOC) is a
non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring the open development, evolution
and use of the Internet. Working through a global community of chapters and
members, the Internet Society collaborates with a broad range of groups to
promote the technologies that keep the Internet safe and secure, and advocates
for policies that enable universal access. The Internet Society is also the
organizational home of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).
Media Contact:
Allesandra de Santillana
Media Relations
[email protected]
www.internetsociety.org