Gaming companies collaborate to fight DDoS attacks

Online game players that got new consoles or games this past Christmas might have been disappointed when they went to play. Both Microsoft’s Xbox Live and Sony’s PlayStation Network were down for extended times of a day or more due to DDoS attacks. The now notorious group Lizard Squad had said it would target the gaming industry with attacks on Christmas—and...

Mar 2015

Gaming Provider – Looking for new options?

As industry statistics suggests, many gaming providers are under DDoS attack continuously – each and every day.  Gamers are said to be one of the highest profile targets on the Internet, while at the same time their business models require 100% uptime.  These two facts manifest into quite the conundrum for today’s gaming providers. Live gaming sites...

Mar 2015

To catch a crook: Company victimized by DDoS offers a 100 Bitcoin bounty to unmask its attacker

Last November the Helsinki-based Bitcoin service Bitalo was hit by a DDoS attack that lasted two days. The attacker (known as DD4BC) contacted Bitalo to demand a ransom of 1 Bitcoin (about $326 USD) to stop the attack and to provide information on how he or she did the attack. The attacker even offered to provide guidance to Bitalo on how to prevent...

Mar 2015

Industry Observations of DDoS Trends

Observing and analyzing DDoS attacks over a period of time helps us all understand trends so that we can better prepare for the future. Verisign has recently published its DDoS Trends Report for the last half of 2014, and there are some interesting observations. For one thing, attacks are growing larger in size. In the attacks observed by Verisign in...

Feb 2015

Why DDoS scrubbing-lanes?

With regards to scrubbing-lane approaches, years ago Internet Service Providers (ISP) realized, “Yes DDoS is a problem we will have to deal with now and in the future”.  From some reports as early as the year 2000 ISPs began observing DDoS attacks traversing their networks.  How did they see the effects of DDoS attacks – way back then? Simple, they...

Feb 2015

Don’t dig a well when your house is on fire

Relying on human intervention to mitigate DDoS attacks is like digging a well when your house is on fire.  When it comes to ensuring service availability and maintaining uptime and SLAs, hosting providers should use minimal (if any) manual intervention when defending against a DDoS attack.  Instead, real-time DDoS mitigation will allow providers to...

Feb 2015

Return on Investment vs. Return on Availability

In my discussions with organizations looking to protect their business from the wrath of DDoS attacks, I often hear the same question, “How do we obtain a Return on Investment (ROI) on a DDoS protection solution?”  Years ago I would attempt to delineate a potential ROI model, often on the fly.  On several occasions, I worked tirelessly into the night...

Feb 2015

More than half of U.S. businesses were targeted by a DDoS attack last year. Was yours among them?

How pervasive have DDoS attacks become? According to research from the global network services company BT Global Services, two out of every five organizations worldwide were targeted by DDoS attacks last year. That’s the global average. In the United States, more than half (58%) of all organizations were targeted. Those aren’t good odds. With so many...

Feb 2015

Experiencing pain you can’t explain?

Last week I attended the Corero annual sales kickoff at our HQ in Hudson, MA. While there, I had the opportunity to spend several days with one of our most seasoned security engineers, David B.  He was discussing his experience regarding a hosting provider who was currently evaluating the Corero SmartWall® Threat Defense System (TDS) as a proof of concept...

Jan 2015

The double-edged sword of operating a hosting data center  

The more customers you host in your data center, the better, right?  Of course, that means more revenue.  And if those customers are in multiple industry verticals, even better, correct?  Supporting a variety of customer types protects  against revenue fluctuations if rough economic times affect a certain vertical and not the others.  But here’s the...

Jan 2015