Today, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks have become an increasingly common and damaging threat to companies and organizations. These attacks can cause unavailability of services, financial losses and reputational damage. Faced with this challenge, Anti-DDoS Cloud (cloud mitigation) has emerged as an effective solution for combating DDoS attacks, providing greater defense capacity and advanced detection and filtering capabilities.
Anti-DDoS Cloud vs On Premises
On June 7, 8 and 9, 2023, customers of Microsoft’s online services around the world complained of crashes. The company did not immediately clarify what was happening. However, a week later, on the 16th, it made a publication explaining that its web applications had been attacked with malicious traffic. This is what caused the denial of service episodes at various times. The incident was resolved within a few hours, but it is yet another wake-up call for companies of all sizes. These attacks are growing in frequency and intensity, requiring increasingly sophisticated resources to mitigate them. When a company the size of Microsoft recognizes the possibility of attacks, smaller companies should be concerned.
Denial of service attacks are nothing new, and can be dealt with in various ways. But today, cloud-based mitigation services (anti-ddos cloud) are arguably the most efficient. Of course, defenses can be made on premisesIn other words, directly on the network that is being attacked, with specific equipment. And years ago that was precisely the main solution, because cloud defenses were still evolving. However, on-premises defense requires investment in new network projects and the acquisition of high-capacity equipment. As a result, it also requires new maintenance and support contracts and possibly more manpower. And even then, there’s still the possibility that all of this will not be enough for overwhelming attacks like the one reported at the beginning of this article.
On-premises solutions don't have the flexibility of the cloud
When attacks exceed the filtering capacity available on premises (and this could happen at any time), the company will have no choice but to block 100% of the traffic, diverting it into a black hole. When this is done, no traffic will reach the network – which means the company will be offline. And in such a case, unfortunately the cybercriminals will have won the battle.
In recent years, due to traffic demands as well as the evolution and sophistication of these attacks, mitigation strategies have evolved and cloud-based solutions have come to stand out precisely because of their efficiency. What has happened in this period is that clouds have become bigger, stronger, more resilient, faster and with more points of presence around the globe. At the same time, network equipment has come a long way.
The combination of these factors has eliminated some of the drawbacks that could arise with anti-data cloud solutions. For example, some increase in latency. In the past, by redirecting all traffic to sanitize it in “scrubbing centers”, some cloud mitigation solutions could increase application response latency. But today, good solutions like this no longer have this side effect. Some specialized companies, such as Huge Networks, for example, have invested heavily in researching and developing specific equipment and software for handling traffic – a resource that is far beyond the reach of non-specialized companies.
It's not common, but an attack can last for hours
Although statistics show that the overwhelming majority of denial-of-service attacks are short-lived, they can still cause damage. These attacks aim to interrupt or delay operations and transactions that are relevant to companies. As a result, consequences such as loss of revenue, customers or reputation are frequent. It’s also not uncommon to find all three at the same time.
This risk makes the response time for mitigation extremely important. It must therefore be extremely short, with an automatic, precise and instantaneous response, as well as having flexible operating resources to meet the changing characteristics of today’s attack traffic. For these and other reasons, anti-data cloud solutions have proven to be the most viable option on the market.
Perhaps your company has even installed on-premises resources capable of meeting this challenge. However, only companies specializing in attack mitigation have the expertise and the appropriate cloud resources to handle the defense effectively now and in the future. Some organizations, such as ISPs and website hosting providers, are generally hit harder by high-volume attacks from cybercriminals. They are attractive targets because they serve as a gateway to the Internet for many organizations.
Denial of service damages providers and their customers
This means that a successful attack on an ISP or hosting provider can cause damage to many of its customers. As a consequence, we can highlight the degradation or interruption of services. In Brazil, many small providers have been subjected to denial-of-service attacks by cybercriminal groups, who demand a ransom to stop the malicious traffic. Cybercriminals are betting that these companies’ commitment to customer service will lead them to pay ransoms.
In addition, there are several other factors that lead a cybercriminal to attack a business, such as unfair competition. In all scenarios, the best thing to do is to protect your company with a robust and efficient solution.
Because of this danger, even though they have data centers and (theoretically) the resources to defend themselves, many Brazilian providers have contracted anti-ddos cloud mitigation services. Among them HugeGuard Cloud, from Huge Networks, stands out because of its ease of deployment (just connect via GRE, or via L2/Fiber optic, and then announce the prefixes via BGP), its SLA (one of the strictest and least flexible on the market) and the company’s 20TB backbone.