Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security, or MANRS, was founded with the ambitious goal of improving the security and reliability of the global Internet routing system, based on collaboration among participants and shared responsibility for Internet infrastructure. These are undoubtedly essential pillars supporting the Internet’s tremendous growth and success, but we must better articulate the incentives of contributing to global security and resilience to grow MANRS participation and reach our goals.
To do so, we engaged 451 Research to understand the attitudes and perceptions of Internet service providers and the broader enterprise community around MANRS and how it relates to their organizations. The results of the study are documented in the report: https://www.routingmanifesto.org/resources/research/.
The study results demonstrate considerable unrealized potential for MANRS, showing that enterprises are interested in security and their interest should be a strong incentive for more service providers to participate. Market education could be particularly effective in overcoming the operational inertia that many providers face.
The key points from the study are:
- While MANRS itself is not well known by enterprises, its attributes are highly valued.
- Enterprises have high expectations for MANRS efforts.
- Enterprise perceptions of MANRS can translate into increased revenue for service providers.
- Existing MANRS actions cover a reasonable set of controls.
- There are options to extend the MANRS actions for some providers.
While there have been challenges in creating a dramatic increase in MANRS adoption, the study shows there is solid alignment between the motivations of service providers and the aspirations of enterprises.
We encourage you to read the entire report and let us know what you think! We hope that with additional effort, bringing these two together could create a bright future for MANRS.
[Note: This post was originally published on the MANRS Blog.]