Security in the DDos battlefield

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“Cryptocurrency is fast becoming the new DDos battlefield,” warns Lee Chen, CEO and Founder of A10 Networks (www.a10networks.com) during a recent interview.  “This year we can expect cryptocurrency attacks to become bigger, more frequent and more sophisticated.  For as little as $18 per month, cybercriminals can now flood servers with traffic and launch around four million DDoS attacks against a wide range of targets, such as banks, government agencies and private companies.”

 

As companies undergo their digital transformations and their dependency on web becomes greater DDos attackers now have many more targets to aim at, as cyber criminals look to use denial of service as a chance to extort a ransom, damage brand or create a diversion as part of a multi-layered assault on a corporation’s network. 

 

“No organization is immune,” says Chen.  “Businesses and consumers are adopting IoT in a big way.  We are now seeing an unprecedented number of attacks and frequency, with the attacks themselves becoming more complex – especially as mobile devices and access to multiple clouds continues to open up the IT landscape.”

 

A recent A10 Networks’ report revealed that nearly half of all IT professional have either been a victim of a DDos attack, or more frighteningly didn’t yet know if they already had!

 

“Our research shows that over 80% of all DDos attacks employ multiple attack types.  Every organization now needs smart, scalable hybrid DDoS defences to efficiently tailor mitigation strategies to combat the changes in the DDoS landscape.  In particular, companies need to keep themselves safe against apps with weak security accessing their networks,” says Chen.

 

“Today, we are now seeing the tactics for DDoS attacks  moving beyond just using request floods designed to bombard and overwhelm infrastructure, to include low-bandwidth attacks that target the network or application layer of service provider services and their subscribers.  These “low and slow” tactics are generally not detected until well into the attack progression and often enable threat actors to successfully disrupt the targeted service.”

 

To increase the effectiveness of frontline defences against all manner of DDoS attacks, A10 DDoS protection solutions offers multi-vector protection even during the probing phase of an attack or while transitioning from on-premises to cloud scrubbing.

 

“Both our A10 DDos Protection Cloud and our A10 One-DDoS Protection solution are designed to deliver a full spectrum enterprise protection to detect and mitigate distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks for our customers,” explains Chen.  “Unlike other cloud-based DDoS protection services, our solutions (which are powered by Verisign’s cloud-based DDoS Protection Service) are based on legitimate traffic, so enterprises do not pay for the amount of traffic that attacks apply against their network.  Instead, traffic diversions, or “swings” to the cloud service are optimized by the on-premise A10 Thunder TPS appliances which uses machine learning, traffic profiling and intelligent policy escalation to reduce disruption on-premise and alert A10 when redirection to the cloud may be necessary.”

 

It is clear that whilst downtime from a DDos attack is moving away from being measured in days to being measured in hours, attacks are more prevalent.

 

“Many organizations are now moving away from hybrid solutions and toward on-premise appliances to counter multi-vector attacks which in turn has increased the focus on vendor performance,” says Chen.

 

“Organizations are prepared to deploy a range of solutions in response on-premise appliances are increasingly seen as the most effective way to address multi-vector DDoS threats.  Our research has shown that while appliance use has increased, other solutions in place have remained largely unchanged. This suggests that appliances have been brought in to reinforce existing protection, rather than to replace it.”

 

“Without a doubt, the DDoS market is maturing, leaving no room for complacency.  Any DDoS strategy should therefore be subjected to frequent, rigorous review, against both changing business priorities and the evolving nature of potential threats.  As skills increase against an evolving threat landscape, organizations need to be able to decide what criteria is most appropriate to their business needs and set their DDoS strategy and solutions accordingly,” concludes Chen.