Company Announcements

Lumen Defender Plus, powered by Black Lotus Labs intelligence, stops threats before they reach business networks – delivering measurable results for companies like Apex DataCom

DENVER , April 22, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The need for smarter, faster, and more automated defenses has never been greater. In 2024, 86% of enterprises reported a year-over-year increase in cyber threats. Lumen Technologies (NYSE: LUMN) today announced it is putting the strength of its global threat intelligence that safeguards its own infrastructure into the hands of enterprise businesses. Lumen Defender^SM Plus, built entirely on Lumen's network and powered by the advanced threat intelligence capabilities of Black Lotus Labs, is designed to automatically block internet-based cyber threats at the network edge – including bots, malware, spam, phishing, Command and Control (C2) and proxy activity before they ever reach a business's environment.

"With Lumen Defender Plus, we're giving businesses something they've never had before—direct access to the same real-time intelligence and automated protection we use to secure Lumen's network, one of the world's largest and most connected," said Martin Nystrom, Lumen vice president of Black Lotus Labs and product security. "We're combining Black Lotus Lab's visibility into the global threat landscape with our AI engine to stop real-world threats before they ever reach a business. This proactive security solution adds a layer of visibility, control, and protection most businesses don't have today."

Apex DataCom, an IT consulting firm specializing in cloud applications and business advisory services, recently piloted Lumen Defender Plus and reported strong results—a 70-80% decrease in security alerts, plus the immediate blocking of hundreds of brute force attacks conducted by a nation state. Analytics from Lumen Defender Plus revealed that over a seven-day period, hundreds of thousands of threats - including botnets, malware, and ransomware - were blocked on Apex DataCom's 10-gigabit circuits. By automatically mitigating these threats at the network edge, Lumen Defender Plus is freeing up Apex DataCom's internal IT team to focus on more strategic initiatives.

Lumen Defender Plus is integrated with Lumen® Internet On-Demand (IoD) service and is automatically enabled without manual configurations or extra equipment. Once activated, it immediately begins blocking malicious IP addresses using a real-time stream of threat intelligence from Lumen's Black Lotus Labs, which tracks over 2.3 million threats per day and has a proven history of uncovering and disrupting multi-year nation-state campaigns. Unlike traditional firewalls or endpoint-based solutions, Lumen Defender Plus operates at the network edge, minimizing the burden on security teams and improving operational efficiency.

Businesses can quickly see threats and act on those using a customizable web portal that includes:

• Real-time monitoring of threat types, origins, and risk levels
• Custom blocking to deny addresses based on severity level
• Detailed reports for viewing and sharing active and blocked threats
• Instant alerts via email or texts

Lumen plans to extend Lumen Defender Plus to Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) environments in the future, expanding protection to even more business-critical connections.

Read IDC's Lumen Defender Plus report here. For more information, go to Defender: Network Threat Detection & Protection Service | Lumen.

About Lumen Technologies 
Lumen is unleashing the world's digital potential. We ignite business growth by connecting people, data, and applications – quickly, securely, and effortlessly. As the trusted network for AI, Lumen uses the scale of our network to help companies realize AI's full potential. From metro connectivity to long-haul data transport to our edge cloud, security, managed service, and digital platform capabilities, we meet our customers' needs today and as they build for tomorrow. For news and insights visit news.lumen.com, LinkedIn: /lumentechnologies, X: @lumentechco, Facebook: /lumentechnologies, Instagram: @lumentechnologies, and YouTube: /lumentechnologies.  

 

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SOURCE Lumen Technologies