Making the Case for DDoS Protection update from February 2013

Use of cloud computing has evolved the threat landscape that organizations must face. Now, with more utilization of the Internet and WAN services, more companies are at risk of some type of an attack. In particular, security administrators must now concern themselves around distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Just like the advancements in technology, new ways of attacking an organization from the Internet are emerging as well. Gartner, in conjunction with Arbor Networks, created this white paper to show organizations the vital process of protecting the environment from potential DDoS attacks.

In designing a solid solution, administrators must analyze the industry and have a clear understanding of their own infrastructure. This white paper not only outlines the definition of a DDoS attack, it illustrates the important best practices revolving around DDoS defense. These practices include:
  •  Understanding that today’s attacker is using a combination of the following to carry out a DDoS attack:
  1. High-bandwidth or volumetric
  2. Application-layer attacks
  •  The best pace to stop high-bandwidth DDoS attacks is in the ISP’s cloud (via network-based DDoS protection).
  •  The best place to perform application-layer DDoS detection and mitigation is at the network perimeter.

Aside from establishing a solid DDoS attack prevention plan – administrators must know how to budget for solutions and communicate these changes. Many times, the communication process will revolve around non-IT people. To get the message across, IT administrators must learn how to speak “business.” This means outlining dollars lost during outages, the possibility of lost data and how that can affect image, and the amount of lost productivity from poorly performing DDoS-affected systems. To help illustrate the point, this white paper outlines the Four-I methodology. Click here to download this white paper.