World IPv6 Day: Why should you care?

June 9, 2011 - PRLog -- With World IPv6 Day fully underway, we look at why your business should take note.

Given the lukewarm response to panicky reports surrounding the need to switch from IPv4 to IPv6, it would come as no surprise if people didn’t go mad for World IPv6 Day.

Today, however, could make a big impact and rightly so. Just the fact the likes of Google and Facebook are supporting the event should be enough to inspire most aspiring businesses.

The fact is, there is more to the situation than simply IPv4 addresses running out. If companies don’t prepare themselves, they could be shooting themselves in the foot, leaving a wound which won’t heal. http://www.goodlaptopbattery.co.uk/compaq/nc6000.htm

Security worries

One big worry is security and the central issue here is detection.

Cyber criminals could use IPv6 traffic to bypass firewalls and security appliances, some of which will not have been configured to pick up on IPv6.

Hackers have picked up on this already, preparing attacks on firms who haven’t equipped their networks for the switch, according to Qing Li, chief scientist at Blue Coat Systems.

“One of the biggest problems today is attackers are leveraging IPv6 to circumvent security protections and security policies," Li told IT PRO.

“You really have to have the intelligent, security orientated appliances and solutions… to be able to have the visibility and control to secure traffic.”

Li recommended creating secure user policies and accelerating or optimising IPv6-enabled web content to deal with transitional problems.

Another annoyance for IT with IPv6 will be down to consumerisation. Each modern device entering a corporate network will come with a separate IPv6 address, rather than sharing one IPv4 address. This means IT departments will have to keep a closer eye on what those devices are doing.

Despite the concerns, however, the move to IPv6 could also cause problems for malware authors themselves.

“With the introduction of IPv6, the massive amount of possible addresses in a default subnet and additional software tweaks has created new challenges for malware authors and cyber criminals,” Symantec said in a blog post.

“It is now unfeasible to perform brute force IPv6 address scans in order to profile a network or identify a possible attack vector in this way. IPv6 also mitigates a number of existing IPv4 attacks by design.”

IPv6 comes with an added security protocol known as IPsec, which authenticates and encrypts data sent across an IP enabled network, Symantec noted.

Business need

Outside of this security boost with IPv6, companies stand to benefit from IPv6 in other ways.

When talking about the move to IPv6, the big message from tech giants has been around the need to support the growth of the internet. Of course, businesses should care about this if they want to continue making money out of customers across the internet.

“Ignoring the move from IPv4 to IPv6 will seriously hinder the growth of the internet, something companies of this stature should be only too aware of,” said Melvyn Wray, senior vice president of product marketing in EMEA at global networking infrastructure provider Allied Telesis. http://www.goodlaptopbattery.co.uk/acer/aspire-5920.htm

“A reluctance to accept the switchover could prevent UK businesses from benefiting from enhanced security features and communicating with their customers around the world, holding back the development of a new wave of connected devices – something that is economically unviable in today’s business environment.”

Piers Daniell, managing director of business ISP Fluidata, urged companies to ensure their websites are compatible with both IPv4 and IPv6 to make sure they don’t miss out on contact with customers. Daniell called on ISPs to help firms in enabling dual-stack capability.

“Even today most hardware shipped by ISPs to providers still doesn’t cater for IPv6 or will only once a software patch is applied,” he added.

“I am a great believer that if ISPs can assist adoption, it will speed up the development of new services, which would only be possible with IPv6. This will increase the UK’s competitiveness on a global scale.”

Another benefit of shifting over to IPv6 is the greater visibility of individual IP addresses – something marketers could harness.

“With IPv6, for instance, organisations and marketers can immediately develop a more personal and direct relationship with the connected-device user - as all devices using IPv6 have unique publicly-visible IP addresses,” noted Jeff Burdette, director of research and development at IP intelligence expert Digital Element.

“This differs from IPv4, which in a common deployment, can't necessarily distinguish whether one device or one hundred devices is accessing the website from a single IP address at any given moment.”

So from security to marketing, there are clearly plenty of business benefits from the move over to IPv6.

Don’t panic!

Whilst all of this may seem a little scary, a key message here is not to panic if you haven’t started adapting your network already.

Even if you’re not taking part in today’s testing, use the event to kick-start processes on working out what needs to be done with IPv6. Then implement changes where necessary.

As we’ve seen with Google and Facebook, many tech firms have moved to support IPv6, so when it comes to relying on providers and other vendors, businesses shouldn’t have too much to worry about. http://www.goodlaptopbattery.co.uk/dell/latitude-d630.htm

“The internet is maturing and the protocols need to change to enable this,” said Matt McCloskey, head of applications and services at Virgin Media Business.

“However, there's no need to panic; we've been expecting this for a long time and the necessary precautions have been taken to ensure a smooth switchover.”

Whatever you do, don’t leave it too late. Otherwise your network will be left as leaky as a sieve and as out of date as a floppy disk.

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