The digital world is a part of our everyday life – at home, at work and on the go. We talk, shop and conduct business in it, so cybersecurity should be our top priority. Just a few years ago, a cyber attack required months of preparation. Today you can buy it the way you buy software licenses – it can be done online and it is merely a matter of minutes. All you have to do is indicate the target, choose the size and type of attack. The rest of the work is done by millions of devices around the world. Perhaps even the ones in your home or office. DDoS attacks have become an everyday occurrence. Their goal is simple: to block access to the victim’s services. For companies, this can mean losses worth millions as well as loss of image.

Marcin Skwarek, Senior Software Engineer at EXATEL:

“If we want to consider some of the major DDoS attacks, we should definitely mention April 2007 – a massive attack on Estonia that cut the entire country off from the world. March 2013: an attack on Allegro that prevented customers from using the service. September 2016: an attack on two Russian banks, Sberbank and Alfa Bank, causing huge financial losses. And October 2016, United States, an attack on a DNS service provider that caused improper functioning of sites like Netflix, Twitter, Reddit and Wikipedia.”

Dr Teodor Buchner, Research and Development Project Specialist at EXATEL

“Today, effective systems that protect against DDoS attacks are simply a necessity. Such attacks have been, are, and will continue to be performed; as a result, we must protect ourselves, our network, and our customers from such attacks. Existing technologies are expensive to buy and maintain and the lion’s share of the price is the cost of software licenses. I must admit that for us as engineers, for Exatel, it sounded like quite a challenge. This is why we have developed the TAMA system. This is an operator-grade antiDDoS system. It is an original solution, developed from scratch at Exatel for public sector customers, commercial sector clients, we can tailor this solution to the needs of a specific group of customers because we have full control over it. The solution is being developed on the basis of co-financing from the National Centre for Research and Development and in consortium with a scientific and research unit, so there is certainly no lack of skills and competence in this project.”

Marcin Skwarek:

“To put it plainly: TAMA separates the good packets from the bad. The reality is that our alarm system is on constant alert. If we notice any anomalies, we are able to momentarily redirect traffic to our scrubbing devices. There, we separate the good packets from the bad, so that the customer does not notice the effects of the attack at all.

Dr Teodor Buchner

“TAMA has many advantages, but two are particularly worth mentioning. The advantage is the ease of scaling. If I have such a single block that is able to process 80 gigabits per second of traffic, we can add another one and another one to it, therefore we have 160, 320 and these solution is very easy to scale. Therefore, we can flexibly adapt to the requirements of the link we are protecting. The second important feature from our perspective is the security of the source code, because we wrote it ourselves, tested it, audited it, so we know what is in it. TAMA is not just about safety. It is also the ability to tailor the solution to the needs of the Polish customer and to the specifics of the Polish market and to the protection of Polish cyberspace.”

Rafał Magryś – Vice-President of the Management Board at EXATEL

“For twenty years we have been building one of the largest fibre optic networks in Poland. We provide services to financial, medical, corporate, energy and public sector customers. Exatel supports the country’s security system, e.g. Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Interior and Administration, Police, Fire Department, Border Guard. Exatel has dozens of certificates, among them is the first level industrial security certificate of the European Union and NATO. We have a vision of how cyber security and telecommunications should look in Poland, not only currently, but also in the future. We have created an in-house research and development department consisting of software developers, analysts and network architects. Thanks to them, thanks to this department, we were the first entity in Europe to conduct public tests of 5G networks. With products like SDNbox and TAMA, we are already in the place where others will be tomorrow.”

EXATEL. The most secure Polish network.