Joint Guidance: Enhanced Visibility and Hardening for Communications Infrastructure

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has joined international partners to release guidance detailing the best protection against a People’s Republic of China (PRC)-affiliated threat actor that has compromised networks of major global telecommunications providers.

This guide recommends actions for organisations to quickly identify anomalous behaviour, vulnerabilities and threats, and how to respond to a cyber incident. It also guides organisations to reduce existing vulnerabilities, improve secure configuration habits, and limit potential entry points.

Although tailored to network defenders and engineers of communications infrastructure, Enhanced Visibility and Hardening Guidance for Communications Infrastructure(external link), may also be applicable to organisations with on-premises enterprise equipment.

The NCSC has joined international partners for the release of this guidance to highlight this threat and provide network engineers and defenders of communications infrastructure with best practices to enhance their ability to monitor, detect, and understand activity within their networks and harden their network devices against successful exploitation.

We encourage New Zealand telecommunications and other organisations with on-premises enterprise equipment to familiarise themselves with this guide and apply the best practices.

Read Enhanced Visibility and Hardening Guidance for Communications Infrastructure.(external link)