The world launch of IPv6 happened back in June 2012, but just how secure is IPv6 some six years on?
The newly published Internet Society State of IPv6 Deployment report for 2018 points to the success of IPv6 deployment. More than 25 percent of all Internet-connected networks advertise IPv6 connectivity, for example. If you combine the top 15 ISPs across the world, nearly half a billion people are using IPv6 already. Six years ago, less than one in every 100 connections to Google were using IPv6, today that is one in four. The report does admit, however, that “enterprise operations tend to be the elephant in the room when it comes to IPv6 deployment.”
Internet Society Chief Internet Technology Officer, Olaf Kolkman says that IPv6 is “increasingly seen as a competitive advantage, a market differentiator and an essential tool for forward-looking Internet applications and service providers of all kinds.” But the question for enterprise security teams remains, just how secure is IPv6?
IPv6 has been around for what feels like forever, but even if you take the 2012 launch date then it has hardly set the world alight in that six years as the Internet Society would have us think. That enterprises are the elephant in the room, as stated in the news story, is what stands out for me as someone who runs a medium-size enterprise himself. Until we can be convinced not only of the need for switching to IPv6 but also that it can be done securely and without an excessive cost overhead then we will stick with what isn’t broken here and doesn’t need fixing thanks very much. Oh, and thanks very much for the security perspective in your story. Food, as they say, for thought.
Thanks for reading Jon, and for taking the time to comment.