Lumen Solutions for Microsoft Teams designed to improve worker productivity
DENVER, June 22, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Over the past year, businesses and government agencies have become much more aware of the importance of remote collaboration, business continuity, and the unified communication technologies that enable both. They also realized the need to be agile so employees could work from anywhere without sacrificing the customer experience.
To help organizations migrate from complex communications to efficient collaboration, Lumen Technologies today launched Lumen Solutions for Microsoft Teams a managed, unified communications solution that leverages the Lumen platform to improve worker productivity, business agility and customer support.
“Few businesses were ready for the challenges imposed by the global public health crisis,” said Craig Richter, senior director of product management at Lumen. “With Lumen Solutions for Microsoft Teams, businesses can easily adopt ‘work from anywhere’ policies because Lumen takes on the burden of managing the complex calling and collaboration tools that make remote work possible. Delivering one of the world’s most popular unified communications solutions over the Lumen platform gives customers access to a secure global network and a fast, secure platform for applications and data.”
Since the start of the pandemic, unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) has become critical to maintaining business continuity and delivering superior customer experience because it integrates previously disparate voice, video, and web services to provide a consistent and reliable user experience across a variety of devices. And with Lumen Solutions for Microsoft Teams, businesses also benefit by combining the Microsoft Teams calling and collaboration tools with Lumen expertise in delivering a managed user experience that includes advanced reporting and analytics.
“Offerings like Lumen Solutions for Microsoft Teams which leverage Microsoft technology to adapt to a changing workplace continue to evolve to meet the needs of the customers they serve,” said Daniel Canning, director, Microsoft Teams Platform. “We’re pleased that Lumen is extending the capabilities of Teams at a time when remote work is of such critical importance.”
DENVER, April 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Acknowledging their strong and ongoing commitment to being a diverse and inclusive company, Forbes has named Lumen Technologies (NYSE: LUMN) to its list of Best Employers for Diversity for the second consecutive year. The recognition is jointly presented by Forbes and Statista Inc., the world-leading statistics portal and industry ranking provider.
The Best Employers for Diversity 2021 were selected based on Statista’s innovative methodology, guaranteeing unbiased results and providing reliable insights. More than 50,000 U.S. employees were surveyed in companies with a minimum of 1,000 employees to identify the Best Employers for Diversity.
“This recognition is a compliment to the employees who make up our diverse and inclusive culture. Our people represent who we are,” says India Sylvester, Lumen’s chief diversity and inclusion officer. “Our work isn’t done. We will continue to embrace and promote a diverse culture, diverse thoughts, and diverse ideas. We are a company where everyone is welcome.”
The evaluation was based on four criteria:
Direct Recommendations: Employees were asked to give their opinions on a series of statements regarding age, gender, ethnicity, disability, LGBTQA+ & general diversity in their current workplace. The recommendations of women, elders, and ethnic minorities were weighted higher than the non-minority groups.
Indirect Recommendations: Participants were also given the chance to evaluate other employers in their respective industries that stand out either positively or negatively regarding diversity. Only the recommendations of minority groups were considered.
Diversity Among Top Executives/Board and Diversity Engagement Indicators were also part of the evaluation.
“Our company is a better place for embracing a mixture of cultures, ideas, and acceptance,” says Eos Rios, lead software developer and a member of several Lumen employee resource groups. “As someone who has been with Lumen for more than 20 years, I’m grateful to Lumen for supporting a place of work where we can be committed to respecting and learning about the diversity of our teammates.”
About Lumen Technologies:
Lumen is guided by our belief that humanity is at its best when technology advances the way we live and work. With approximately 450,000 route fiber miles and serving customers in more than 60 countries, we deliver the fastest, most secure platform for applications and data to help businesses, government and communities deliver amazing experiences.
Learn more about the Lumen network, edge cloud, security, communication and collaboration solutions and our purpose to further human progress through technology at news.lumen.com/home, LinkedIn: /lumentechnologies, Twitter: @lumentechco, Facebook: /lumentechnologies, Instagram: @lumentechnologies and YouTube: /lumentechnologies. Lumen and Lumen Technologies are registered trademarks of Lumen Technologies LLC in the United States. Lumen Technologies LLC is a wholly owned affiliate of Lumen Technologies Inc.
The veteran information security leader will oversee corporate security initiatives and programs
DENVER, April 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Lumen Technologies (NYSE: LUMN)today announced that Jason Lish has joined the company’s senior leadership team as chief security officer.
In this role, Jason will provide leadership, strategic direction and oversight for all corporate security functions, including physical security, emergency preparedness, fraud management, government security services, and corporate cybersecurity. He’ll also oversee global security initiatives supporting corporate security architecture and threat management, as well as development and preventative security standards and procedures.
“Protecting Lumen information and physical assets from security threats is critical to protecting and serving our customers and their networks,” said Andrew Dugan, Lumen chief technology officer. “This is why we are thrilled to have Jason filling this very important role. His background and his broad security experience are an ideal fit for Lumen as we work to fulfill our purpose of empowering human progress through technology.”
Prior to joining Lumen, Jason served as the chief security, privacy and data officer for Advisor Group, Inc., leading all security and data integrity for one of the largest networks of independent financial advisors in the U.S. Prior to that, Jason was CSO and later chief information officer for Alight Solutions, leading physical and fraud security, as well as Alight’s overall digital, technology, enterprise risk and security strategy.
Jason also spent many years in various security leadership roles with the Charles Schwab Corporation and Honeywell International. He started his career in the U.S. Air Force serving at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada and Keflavik NAS, Iceland.
For more information about how the Lumen platform enables companies to capitalize on emerging applications that power the 4th Industrial Revolution, visit www.lumen.com.
Company responds to growing consumption of digital entertainment
BUENOS AIRES, Feb. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — To continue supporting the strong demand in internet traffic driven by video and gaming platforms, Lumen nearly quadrupled the capacity of its Content Distribution Network (CDN) in Latin America, strengthening service capabilities in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru.
“Lumen knows the best networks are the result of early and ongoing investments; this is what sets us apart,” said Leonardo Barbero, Lumen LATAM senior vice president of products. “Expanding our networks throughout LATAM is what has enabled us to seamlessly transit information across the peaks of demand generated by the pandemic. Throughout 2020, we reinvested to be prepared for a phenomenon that will continue to grow.”
Latin America network expansions include:
Mexico Tripled the current amount of fiber route miles to 2237 miles.
Ecuador Added a 500-mile fiber optic route connecting to Colombia, and a 600-mile national fiber ring.
Chile Added an additional 34 fiber route miles connecting 200 corporate buildings in Greater Santiago.
Argentina Added 112 fiber route miles between the provinces of Mendoza and San Juan
Brazil Added more than 280 fiber route miles between the northeast of the country, São Paulo, Belo Horizonte and Rio de Janeiro.
Lumen is also increasing its Content Delivery Network (CDN) capacity to meet growing demands from global broadcasters, over the top (OTT) video streaming platforms and gaming companies to deliver high-performing web applications, ultra-high-definition (UHD) video streaming and game downloads. In addition, Lumen added more than 260 racks into its data centers in Colombia, Brazil, Peru and Argentina during 2020, offering customers additional space for housing servers, networking devices and other computing equipment.
“Our top goal is to stay on top of new network demands and continuously deliver robust, high-quality services across our network infrastructure, with maximum security,” noted Barbero. “As demand increases, becomes more complex or changes, our platform will adapt to ensure we’re offering the best digital experience possible.”
According to data from Statista, the streaming entertainment market saw a turnover of more than US$50 billion in 2020 and will continue growing at 10.7% annually to US$85 billion in 2025.
ENVER, May 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks continue to evolve in complexity, frequency and scale. Lumen Technologies (NYSE: LUMN) tracks and mitigates these threats including the Gafgyt and Mirai botnet families and today the company released its quarterly DDoS report for Q1 2021. This research provides a view of the DDoS landscape with findings that both reinforce and expand on these trends.
To create the report, the security team at Lumen looked at intelligence from Black Lotus Labs the company’s threat research arm and attack trends from the Lumen DDoS Mitigation Service platform, which integrates countermeasures directly into the company’s extensive and deeply peered global network.
“As organizations’ dependency on applications to generate revenue deepens, many are realizing they can no longer risk foregoing essential DDoS defenses. The information in this report is more evidence of that,” said Mike Benjamin, Lumen vice president of security and Black Lotus Labs. “As IoT DDoS botnets continue to evolve, Lumen is focused on leveraging our visibility to identify and disrupt malicious infrastructure.”
Key Findings:
The attack sizes in the DDoS report convey the largest attacks scrubbed by Lumen global DDoS scrubbing infrastructure, rather than the largest attacks observed transiting the Lumen network.
IoT Botnets:
Well-known IoT botnets like Gafgyt and Mirai remain serious DDoS threats, with 700 active Command and Control servers (C2s) attacking 28,000 unique victims combined.
Lumen tracked nearly 3,000 DDoS C2s globally in Q1. The most were hosted in Serbia (1,260), followed by the United States (380) and China (373).
Of the most active global C2s that Lumen observed issuing attack commands, the United States had the most (163), followed by the Netherlands (73) and Germany (70).
Lumen tracked more than 160,000 global DDoS botnet hosts. Nearly 42,000 were in the United States the most of any country.
DDoS Attack Trends
The largest attack Lumen measured by bandwidth scrubbed was 268 Gbps; the largest attack measured by packet rate scrubbed was 26 Mpps.
The longest DDoS attack period Lumen mitigated for an individual customer lasted almost two weeks.
Multi-vector mitigations represented 41% of all DDoS mitigations, with the most common using a DNS query flood combined with a TCP SYN flood.
The top three industries targeted in the 500 largest attacks in 1Q21 were: Finance, Software and Technology, and Government.
Tracking User Diagram Protocol (UDP) Reflectors
One of the key tools in the hands of cybercriminals seeking to increase the bandwidth of their attacks is UDP-based reflection leveraging services such as Memcached, CLDAP and DNS.
Through this process, an attacker spoofs a source IP, then uses an intermediary server a reflector to send massive response packets to the victim’s IP rather than back to the attacker.
Black Lotus Labs leverages the visibility from its extensive global network to identify services potentially being leveraged to launch these types of attacks.
Based on data from 1Q21, Black Lotus Labs sees Memcached, CLDAP and DNS services being actively exploited today.
Development of Lumen platform led to several key product launches in 2020
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina, June 2, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Lumen Technologies (NYSE: LUMN), is ranked first in the intra-Latin America Network use case in the 2021 Gartner Critical Capabilities Network Services, Global report. Lumen also ranked second (tied) intra-North America network, third Global network, fourth intra-EMEA network and fifth intra-APAC network use cases, in the same report.
Lumen was placed in the Leaders quadrant in the 2021 Magic Quadrant for Network Services for completeness of vision and ability to execute. The complementary 2021 Critical Capabilities for Network Services, Global report provides deeper insight into service offerings by identifying which ones best fit specific “use cases” by region.
Read the 2021 Gartner Critical Capabilities Network Services, Global report: https://www.gartner.com/doc/reprints?id=1-260RI26A&ct=210514&st=sg
“We believe being first-ranked among 19 vendors in the Intra-Latin America Network use case shows the industry recognizes the commitment Lumen has to successfully lead our customers into the 4th Industrial Revolution,” said Hector Alonso, regional president at Lumen LATAM. “We’ve built a platform, powered by network services, that provides the business solutions customers need to acquire, analyze and act on massive amounts of data. Lumen has also been named Leader in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant report. We won’t remain static as a Magic Quadrant Leader; we’re investing in that platform and will continue delivering new product and customer experience improvements.”
Lumen delivered on its vision in 2020 to further human progress through technology with key product solutions on the Lumen platform. Those include:
Through its adaptive networking capabilities, Lumen also quickly and seamlessly met the new demands placed on global businesses during the early stages of the pandemic. As a technology leader, Lumen immediately recognized the shift and leveraged existing capacity on the backbone network, rolling out enhanced work from anywhere solutions with built-in connected security, protecting customers’ data and business continuity.
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in our research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
Gartner Critical Capabilities for Network Services, Global,Bjarne Munch, Danellie Young, Lisa Pierce,3rdMarch 2021.
Gartner Magic Quadrant for Network Services, Global, Danellie Young, Neil Rickard, Bjarne Munch,2ndMarch 2021.
To help organizations migrate from complex communications to efficient collaboration, Lumen Technologies today launched Lumen Solutions for Microsoft Teams a managed, unified communications solution that leverages the Lumen platform to improve worker productivity, business agility and customer support.