"The write stuff": security issues for customer network management of broadband data services

Customer network management (CNM) services are being offered for public, broadband, data services such as frame relay, switched multi-megabit data service (SMDS), and cell relay services. Customer network management for these public services is intended to extend the customer's capability to manage their communications network from the local area into the wide area. Security features such as access control and authentication are critical to both the CNM service provider and the customer. This is especially true when offering the "write" (i.e., modify) capability. SNMP version 2 (SNMPv2) promises a useful, yet challenging, set of security features for supporting the write capability. The paper describes the security issues associated with CNM and how SNMPv2 and other tools are used to tackle these issues.<>