Key Considerations While Selecting DDoS Protection

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are increasingly devious, complicated and vicious attacks on websites/ web applications that exhaust the computing resources available to make the websites/ web applications unavailable to legitimate users and attackers, often, leverage the downtimes as a shield/ smokescreen for other malicious activities. Choosing the right DDoS protection is imperative for organizations of all types that can immensely minimize the risk of such attacks and save millions of dollars for your organization. Even if you think you are somehow inconsequential or at low risk and therefore, immune to such attacks.

DDoS protection is not just about having more bandwidth or higher infrastructural investments and therefore, considerations for choosing DDoS protection services must go beyond these. Let us take a look at the key considerations which will help you choose an optimal solution/service and ensure that you do not become a victim of DDoS attacks.

4 Key Considerations While Selecting DDoS Protection

Your unique needs and risk profile

First and foremost, you must understand and analyze the risk profile, threat profile, and current security posture of your organization. Look at all potential sources of attacks and vulnerabilities that may be exploited by bad actors to cause your website to crash. If you have already been a victim of such an attack, then consider the factors that caused that past attack. Based on this analysis, gauge the unique needs of your website/ web application and accordingly, research the different options and choose the best-fit DDoS mitigation solution.

Customization and flexibility

Since every business has unique needs and risk/ threat profiles, protection from DDoS attacks relies heavily on the ability of your DDoS mitigation service to customize rules based on your workflow and the solution to your specific requirements. For instance, your business may not be focusing on Asian markets and so your website needs not to allow requests from users in those countries, thereby, limiting the attack surface.

Flexibility is also valuable in preventing DDoS attacks. The solution you choose must be intelligent and flexible enough to quickly change rules/ policies based on real-time insights and traffic pattern analysis or throw in a CAPTCHA challenge to the user to ensure they are not bots or trigger rate-based rules if a user exceeds the preset threshold of requests from a single user.

Multi-layered protection

Now, DDoS attacks can be orchestrated within minimal computing resources (as low as 1GB) and they are not just volumetric in nature. This is because of the accelerated development of technology and the ability of malicious actors to leverage it. There are also sophisticated multi-layered attacks. So, your DDoS defense must be multi-layered too.

Choose a managed, end-to-end and intelligent DDoS mitigation solution that includes

• A DDoS-resilient network architecture that is globally dispersed with built-in redundant resources, capable of handling sudden traffic spikes and thundering surges. This will prevent Layer 3 and 4 or volumetric attacks.
• CDN services that minimize the attack surface by geographically dispersing the network and offering scalable network capacity to minimize the use of bandwidth and computational resources.
• Always on, instantaneous protection against Layer 7 or application-layer attacks with the help of an intelligent, managed, comprehensive WAF placed on the network perimeter to monitor all traffic and block malicious actors from accessing the server or any of your assets by leveraging security loopholes and vulnerabilities.
• The expertise of certified security specialists who help design the solution with surgical accuracy, continuously monitor the security analytics and real-time insights to tune/ update the rules and ensure that your website is always available.

Financial considerations

Budgetary allocations are important in choosing a DDoS prevention service. Calculate your infrastructural investments, staff costs, overheads, support, and training costs and add it to the cost of the solution to choose a solution that fits provides heightened security even with your financial and budgetary constraints.

You must closely look at the inclusions and exclusions of different DDoS mitigation solutions. Ensure that there are no hidden costs for say, customization, support, updates, prevention, after-attack cleanup, etc. Put differently, ensure that the service provider you choose is transparent and reliable. The last thing you want is to be left in the lurch in the face of an attack or threat.

DDoS prevention services like AppTrana ensure that website performance and speed are not affected by the security solution and vice-versa and work 24×7 to ensure that your website is always available to your users.