Kentik

Last updated
Kentik
Type Private
Industry Internet
Founded2014;9 years ago (2014) in San Francisco, California, United States
Founders
Headquarters,
United States [1]
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Website kentik.com

Kentik is an American network observability, network monitoring and anomaly detection company headquartered in San Francisco, California. [2] [3]

Contents

History

Kentik was founded in 2014 as CloudHelix by Co-founders Avi Freedman, Ian Applegate, Ian Pye, and Justin Biegel. The company changed its name to Kentik in 2015. [4]

Technology

Kentik's Network Observability Cloud is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product that ingests NetFlow and other network data and analyzes it to provide network monitoring and anomaly detection services for the operators of Internet-connected networks. Kentik's underlying data engine is a clustered datastore modeled on Dremel. [5] The engine collects and correlates live operational data from Internet routers and switches to produce network activity and health information.

Analysis

Since November 2020, Kentik has been the organizational home of Doug Madory's Internet routing analysis practice, previously associated with Renesys and Renesys' subsequent acquirers DynDNS and Oracle. While employed by Kentik, Madory discovered the Global Resource Systems IP address hijacking which occurred during the final hours of the Trump administration [6] [7] [8] [9] and was the first to accurately quantify the 2021 Facebook outage, the largest communications outage in history. [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tier 1 network</span> Top level network on the internet

A Tier 1 network is an Internet Protocol (IP) network that can reach every other network on the Internet solely via settlement-free interconnection. Tier 1 networks can exchange traffic with other Tier 1 networks without paying any fees for the exchange of traffic in either direction. In contrast, some Tier 2 networks and all Tier 3 networks must pay to transmit traffic on other networks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Intrusion detection system</span> Network protection device or software

An intrusion detection system is a device or software application that monitors a network or systems for malicious activity or policy violations. Any intrusion activity or violation is typically reported either to an administrator or collected centrally using a security information and event management (SIEM) system. A SIEM system combines outputs from multiple sources and uses alarm filtering techniques to distinguish malicious activity from false alarms.

The Non-classified Internet Protocol (IP) Router Network (NIPRNet) is an IP network used to exchange unclassified information, including information subject to controls on distribution, among the private network's users. The NIPRNet also provides its users access to the Internet.

Dyn, Inc. was an Internet performance management and web application security company, offering products to monitor, control, and optimize online infrastructure, and also domain registration services and email products. The company was acquired by Oracle Corporation in 2016, and has operated as a global business unit of Oracle after the acquisition completed in 2017. Some Dyn services are planned to be retired by Oracle on May 31, 2023.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bulletproof hosting</span> Internet service for use by cyber-criminals

Bulletproof hosting (BPH) is technical infrastructure service provided by an Internet hosting service that is resilient to complaints of illicit activities, which serves criminal actors as a basic building block for streamlining various cyberattacks. BPH providers allow online gambling, illegal pornography, botnet command and control servers, spam, copyrighted materials, hate speech and misinformation, despite takedown court orders and law enforcement subpoenas, allowing such material in their acceptable use policies.

BGP hijacking is the illegitimate takeover of groups of IP addresses by corrupting Internet routing tables maintained using the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">IP camera</span> Network-connected digital video camera

An Internet Protocol camera, or IP camera, is a type of digital video camera that receives control data and sends image data via an IP network. They are commonly used for surveillance, but, unlike analog closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras, they require no local recording device, only a local area network. Most IP cameras are webcams, but the term IP camera or netcam usually applies only to those that can be directly accessed over a network connection.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internet censorship</span> Control or suppression of what can be accessed, published, or viewed on the internet

Internet censorship is the legal control or suppression of what can be accessed, published, or viewed on the Internet. Censorship is most often applied to specific internet domains but exceptionally may extend to all Internet resources located outside the jurisdiction of the censoring state. Internet censorship may also put restrictions on what information can be made internet accessible. Organizations providing internet access – such as schools and libraries – may choose to preclude access to material that they consider undesirable, offensive, age-inappropriate or even illegal, and regard this as ethical behaviour rather than censorship. Individuals and organizations may engage in self-censorship of material they publish, for moral, religious, or business reasons, to conform to societal norms, political views, due to intimidation, or out of fear of legal or other consequences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud</span> Cloud computing platform

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is a part of Amazon.com's cloud-computing platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), that allows users to rent virtual computers on which to run their own computer applications. EC2 encourages scalable deployment of applications by providing a web service through which a user can boot an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) to configure a virtual machine, which Amazon calls an "instance", containing any software desired. A user can create, launch, and terminate server-instances as needed, paying by the second for active servers – hence the term "elastic". EC2 provides users with control over the geographical location of instances that allows for latency optimization and high levels of redundancy. In November 2010, Amazon switched its own retail website platform to EC2 and AWS.

Network behavior anomaly detection (NBAD) is a security technique that provides network security threat detection. It is a complementary technology to systems that detect security threats based on packet signatures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internet in North Korea</span> Overview on global internet in North Korea

Internet access is available in North Korea, but is only permitted with special authorization. It is primarily used for government purposes, and also by foreigners. The country has some broadband infrastructure, including fiber optic links between major institutions. Online services for most individuals and institutions are provided through a free domestic-only network known as Kwangmyong, with access to the global Internet limited to a much smaller group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Splunk</span> American technology company

Splunk Inc. is an American software company based in San Francisco, California, that produces software for searching, monitoring, and analyzing machine-generated data via a web-style interface.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lumen Technologies</span> American communications company

Lumen Technologies, Inc. is an American telecommunications company headquartered in Monroe, Louisiana, that offers communications, network services, security, cloud solutions, voice, and managed services. The company was a member of the S&P 500 index until 2023 and the Fortune 500. Its communications services include local and long-distance voice, broadband, Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS), private line, Ethernet, hosting, data integration, video, network, public access, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), information technology, and other ancillary services. Lumen also serves global enterprise customers across North America, Latin America, EMEA, and Asia Pacific.

Internet censorship in Syria is extensive. Syria bans websites for political reasons and arrests people accessing them. Filtering and blocking was found to be pervasive in the political and Internet tools areas, and selective in the social and conflict/security areas by the OpenNet Initiative in August 2009.

An Internet outage or Internet blackout or Internet shutdown is the complete or partial failure of the internet services. It can occur due to censorship, cyberattacks, disasters, police or security services actions or errors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dynatrace</span> American technology company

Dynatrace, Inc. is a global technology company listed on the NYSE that provides a software intelligence platform based on artificial intelligence (AI) and automation. Dynatrace technologies are used to monitor and optimize application performance, software development and security practices, IT infrastructure, and user experience for businesses and government agencies throughout the world.

A software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) is a wide area network that uses software-defined network technology, such as communicating over the Internet using overlay tunnels which are encrypted when destined for internal organization locations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oracle Cloud</span> Cloud computing service

Oracle Cloud is a cloud computing service offered by Oracle Corporation providing servers, storage, network, applications and services through a global network of Oracle Corporation managed data centers. The company allows these services to be provisioned on demand over the Internet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2021 Facebook outage</span> Outage affecting all Facebook operated services

On October 4, 2021, at 15:39 UTC, the social network Facebook and its subsidiaries, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Mapillary, and Oculus, became globally unavailable for a period of six to seven hours. The outage also prevented anyone trying to use "Log in with Facebook" from accessing third-party sites. It lasts for 7 hours and 11 minutes.

Doug Madory is an American Internet routing infrastructure expert, who specializes in analyzing Internet Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routing data to diagnose Internet routing disruptions, such as those caused by communications fiber cable cuts, routing equipment failures, and governmental censorship. His academic background is in computer engineering, and he was a signals specialist in the U.S. Air Force, before arriving at his present specialty, which has occupied his professional career.

References

  1. "Kentik Contact" . Retrieved 22 October 2021.
  2. McCormick, John (7 October 2021). "Network-Monitoring Firm Kentik Raises $40 Million in New Funding". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 22 October 2021.
  3. Wiggers, Kyle (7 October 2021). "Network observability startup Kentik lands $40M". VentureBeat. Retrieved 22 October 2021.
  4. Kerner, Sean Michael (2 July 2015). "CloudHelix, Renamed Kentik, Raises $12M for Security, Network Visibility". eWeek. Retrieved 22 October 2021.
  5. Hall, Susan (14 September 2016). "Kentik Is a Data Engine Modeled after Google Dremel". The New Stack. Retrieved 22 October 2021.
  6. Timberg, Craig (24 April 2021). "Minutes before Trump left office, millions of the Pentagon's dormant IP addresses sprang to life". Washington Post. Retrieved 2 January 2022.
  7. Kay, Grace (1 May 2021). "4 unanswered questions about the mysterious company that began managing a big chunk of the internet minutes before Biden was sworn in". Business Insider. Retrieved 2 January 2022.
  8. Naraine, Ryan (29 April 2021). "Doug Madory on the mysterious AS8003 global routing story". Security Conversations.
  9. Bajak, Frank (25 April 2021). "The big Pentagon internet mystery now partially solved". Associated Press. Retrieved 26 October 2021.
  10. Geer, David (16 November 2021). "What Caused the Facebook Outage?". Communications of the ACM. Association for Computing Machinery. Retrieved 2 January 2022.
  11. Krebs, Brian (4 October 2021). "hat Happened to Facebook, Instagram, & WhatsApp?". Krebs on Security.
  12. "'We're sorry' says Facebook after 'epic' worldwide outage". Associated Press. 4 October 2021. Retrieved 2 January 2022.
  13. Evans, Pete (4 October 2021). "Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp back online after global outage". Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 2 January 2022.
  14. Madory, Doug (5 October 2021). "Facebook's historic outage, explained". Kentik.
  15. Madory, Doug (4 October 2021). "Facebook suffers global outage". Kentik. Archived from the original on October 4, 2021. Retrieved October 4, 2021.