Addressing Cybersecurity Challenges Through Network, Device and Firewall Testing

Recent events are a reminder of the fragility of modern technology and the importance of comprehensive testing.  While airlines, hospitals and other organizations struggled with the loss of their technical capabilities as the result of what appears to be programming issues, it’s just these types of disruptions that bad actors hope for as they attempt to infiltrate networks and wreak havoc.

Telecom has always been a prime target and network providers as well as device manufacturers need to be vigilant.  The best way to ensure security and network response is to perform testing in a safe environment.  

For the network, it’s important to test the response to scenarios such as:

• Will the network properly handle control plane and user plane traffic?

• Does it conform to 3GPP standards?

• How will the network perform under compliant and non-compliant load?

• How quickly and efficiently does the network recover from failure, including failover and recovery time?

• How does the network respond to DDOS and protocol-specific attacks?

For UE device manufacturers, security testing is equally important against performance and security scenarios such as:

• Verifying connections to specific PLMNs in a deterministic network environment

• Identifying what happens with invalid messages

• Testing load

• Measuring the ability of the device to handle DDOS attacks

Beyond network and devices, firewall manufacturers that handle protocols including GTP, SIGTRAN/MAP SMS, Diameter, SGi traffic, need the ability to safely test the response to scenarios such as:

• Will the firewall properly handle compliant and non-compliant message flows?

• How does the firewall respond at higher loads?

• How does it handle DDOS attacks?

Valid8 delivers a comprehensive security solution that empowers network providers, UE device manufacturers and firewall manufacturers with tools to perform broad and detailed testing of the scenarios above and more in a controlled environment.  Valid8 offers highly realistic, cost-effective and easy-to-deploy emulated telecom network for 5G, 4G, 3G, IoT, IMS, MCX, P25 and more.  In addition, the tools in the Valid8 Security test suite enable checking for known protocol vulnerabilities.

Have peace of mind that your devices and network are as secure as possible from attack with testing tools from Valid8.  

Learn more about Valid8’s security testing solutions at www.valid8.com

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