Technologies to improve the resilience of communication networks

The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) launches two reports with three recommendations on emerging new technologies and their potential to improve the resilience of communication networks.

Technologies have been developed with properties that improve both the resilience and security of the Internet. Experience is missing in the area of commercial operation of these features, as well as operational best practices and recommendations in applied network resilience.

Resilience and security of communication networks and services that they support is an issue of critical importance to the EU economy and its citizens, as it impacts day-to-day operation of businesses, affecting daily lives of EU citizens.

ENISA carried out an assessment of three key technologies Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS), Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) and Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) regarding their potential to provide increased network resilience.

This analysis was carried out from two perspectives. The first consisted of analysing the characteristics of the selected technologies and their public communication network’s resilience enhancing features. In parallel, the effectiveness of these technologies, as well as problems and gaps that potentially could compromise the availability of networks and services was assessed through interviews of twelve network operators in the EU Member States.

The key findings of the analysis are:

• The assessed technologies can improve both the resilience and security of the Internet.
• Commercial operation experience is missing for some of the technologies.
• There are neither operational best practices nor recommendations for applied network resilience.
• There is lack of management and coordination between stakeholders.

The three key recommendations are:

• Resilient connectivity of European organisations must be ensured.
• European expertise, best practice and operational experience must be exploited.
• The existence of European trained experts should be ensured.

The full reports are available here.