Interoute launches security barometer

Interoute's new tool will monitor the activity of hackers

Next-generation network (NGN) provider Interoute today launched a new tool designed to provide organisations with a daily snapshot of malicious activity on the web.

The Internet Barometer, which has been two years in the making, anonymises data so it can be relayed in real time without infringing data protection laws, said the firm.

It works by collecting data from 22 separate points of presence across Interoute's fibre-optic network, the largest NGN in Europe, checking against a blacklist of malicious signatures and the firm's own denial of service detection technology.

The information is then put into a scorecard, with high and medium ranked alerts being mapped against the geographic location of the origin and destination of the attacks, said Interoute.

The firm is also offering organisations a free widget that will display a daily threat level.

"We have effectively turned the whole network into a sensor," said Mark Osborne, chief information security officer at Interoute. "Unlike most [scanners] it detects atomic level attacks as welll as botnets and DDOS, so funamentally it's a step forward."