Content
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks are a major challenge for hosting providers and require comprehensive strategies to protect their infrastructure and underlying customers. This article examines the key issues hosting providers face and practical solutions for robust DDoS protection.
The Role of Transit Providers
A transit provider is an essential part of Internet traffic flow. As such, its focus is on protecting its networks and network segments. However, this can also be a vulnerability for the host. It is crucial to ensure that your own transit providers have DDoS mitigation strategies in place. This requires close collaboration with transit providers. To understand the defenses and their impact on your systems, you need to look at the problem from the transit provider’s perspective. Most transit providers always offer standard DDoS protection.
In the standard package, however, this is just a “blackhole” service that simply drops all traffic to the attacked IP address (or IP range). If the underlying clients are KRITIS companies, this becomes a problem for the host provider. The rationale behind this strategy is that any transit provider’s first priority is to protect its capacity in the region. The concerns of the host provider in that region are secondary.
Uplink or Capacity Management
Uplink capacity at the host provider’s site is critical for managing traffic volumes, especially during a DDoS attack when traffic increases dramatically. Hosting providers must invest in high-capacity uplinks and maintain sufficient reserves to effectively handle these traffic spikes. A multi-ISP strategy is therefore adopted, which takes into account the traffic that the DDoS brings and also an appliance that can effectively handle the DDoS traffic so it does not exceed the maximum capacity limit (scalability).
Reselling protection services
DDoS protection services can be expensive. For example, transit providers resell their blackhole DDoS protection to reduce appliance and maintenance costs on their end. Hosting providers can also reduce these costs by reselling either their own protection services or white-label products to customers. This strategy not only offsets costs but also adds value to the provider’s offering and builds customer loyalty. But how can this be presented to the customer? IPS/uplink provider protection cannot be presented in the same way. Another challenge is how to address the issue of buying a local appliance.
Expertise and cost of ownership
Effective DDoS mitigation with appliances requires skilled professionals who can respond quickly. Maintaining this expertise is costly and requires a balance between hiring costs and the need for robust protection. Ongoing training is essential to stay ahead of evolving threats. It’s worth mentioning, too, that the capacity of the access line is not scalable, even with a local appliance.
Appliance, the “on-premise” device
Appliances allow you to intervene directly in the data stream, depending on the location and local infrastructure. These devices are expensive to purchase and require specialized configuration and maintenance. They also have an end-of-life date and the capacity of the access line is limited and difficult to customize. Regular updates and monitoring are required to remain effective against new attack vectors, requiring ongoing investment in technology and training. This makes it a complicated and costly solution.
Cost Management and Billing
The financial impact of DDoS protection, including transit and mitigation services, is significant. Effective cost management requires careful planning and budgeting. Providers need to monitor their usage and optimize their spending to avoid unexpected and high bills.
Learn more about a GDPR-compliant, cloudbased and patented DDoS Protection that delivers, what it promises.
Transparency through reporting
Customers expect transparency around security measures. This starts with the small customer and goes hand-in-hand with KRITIS organizations and other stakeholders. Regular, detailed reporting on DDoS attacks and mitigation is essential. These reports build trust and demonstrate the provider’s commitment to protecting customer data and services.
A DDoS mitigation provider…
…should offer an improvement and simplification of protection in these areas. This enhancement can provide a robust solution to improve DDoS protection through carrier-neutral peering and Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routing. This configuration enables efficient traffic routing and redirection during attacks, providing redundancy and increased resilience.
This is achieved through an automated, real-time DDoS protection service, including reporting of DDoS attacks over IP and reduction of processes and steps in hosting operations. This automation reduces the burden on hosting providers, allowing them to focus on their core business while ensuring robust security.
Conclusion
Protecting against DDoS attacks is a multi-layered challenge for hosting providers. Solving issues related to transit providers, uplink capacity, reselling protection services, cost management, transparency through reporting, maintaining expertise, and on-site equipment maintenance are all essential. The implementation of vendor-neutral peering and BGP routing further increases resilience. Automated and scalable solutions provide an optimized, effective approach to DDoS protection and ensure continuous service availability and customer satisfaction.
Share this post
