Today, Level 3 Communications is probably one of the largest telecom giants, not only here in the United States, but worldwide. This business entity has a long history, as it was founded in 1985. Its current corporate headquarters are located at Broomfield, Colorado, and, at the present time, it employs over 13,500 personnel.
Level 3 serves a wide range of industries, including the following:
- Financial sector
- Federal government
- Healthcare industry
- Media and entertainment
- Research and education
- Wholesale industries.
It’s IT services portfolio is broad, as well, and includes:
- Network access and control
- Cloud based offerings (which include those on the SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS platforms)
- Wireless security
- VOiP
- Cloud based video services.
Level 3 Communications also has the distinction of being the largest Competitive Local Exchange Carrier (CLEC) provider, as well as being the second largest provider of fiber optic based Internet access in the United States.
Now, Level 3 is adding more to its services arsenal. Just last week they announced the acquisition of Black Lotus, a privately held network security company. Their primary focus is in the area of offering Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) mitigation services. Not too much other information was provided about this merger and acquisition activity, other than that this was an all-cash based transaction.
With the acquisition of Black Lotus, Level 3 will be able to add on, or layer, its own services with the security services that have been offered by Black Lotus. However, it appears that Level 3 is now trying to become much more focused on its network security offerings by specializing more in the DDoS mitigation realm. According to Chris Richter, a senior Vice President at Level 3, “We’re seeing demand for these types of services from our customers . . . We acquired a company like Black Lotus, which does DDoS mitigation primarily just a few months after we launched our own DDoS mitigation service in February.” (SOURCE: https://www.fiercetelecom.com/telecom/level-3-acquires-black-lotus-enhances-ddos-mitigation-capabilities).
With the acquisition of Black Lotus, Level 3 can now also offer new proxy based DDoS mitigation services to its customer base as well. This type of service will focus primarily upon application layer attacks, utilizing the functionality of behavioral analytics technology.
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