While Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are not new, they are one of the top availability and security concerns for companies considering a transformation to the cloud.
We’re seeing increases of type, scale, and frequency of occurrence as they are relatively easy and cheap to launch and often are motivated by extortion or hacktivism. The availability of scalable protection against DDoS attacks makes moving to the cloud now even more secure for organizations of all sizes, including those who historically did not have the Information Security (InfoSec) budget for this defensive technology.
In fact, the number of documented DDoS amplification attacks increased by more than 357 percent in the fourth quarter of 2017, compared to 2016 according to data from Nexusguard. Further, more than 56 percent of all attacks exploit multiple vector combinations. In February 2018, Github was attacked via a reflection exploit in Memcached generating 1.35 terabits of attack traffic, the largest DDoS attack ever recorded.
rmsource’s cloud services are based on the Azure platform, which includes DDoS Protection Basic at no cost. Microsoft recently released DDoS Protection Standard service in all cloud regions, which offers increased protection:
The DDoS Protection Basic service leverages always-on traffic monitoring and real-time mitigation to defend against common layer attacks by utilizing the full scale and capacity of Azure’s globally deployed network. This includes Layer 7 DNS Query Floods and volumetric attacks targeting Azure zones. This protection requires no configuration or application changes.
The DDoS Protection Standard service amps up mitigation capabilities for virtual networks. As with the basic service, this requires no application or resource changes and is easily enabled. Standard service is tuned into virtual network traffic profiles using dedicated monitoring and machine learning to configure DDoS protection policies.
Features of this protection service are rich and well-suited for organizations hosting business critical resources or applications in the cloud – many who have not previously had access to this level of defensive protection at an affordable price point.
- Native Platform Integration & Turn-Key Protection: Configuration through Azure Portal and PowerShell. Immediately protects all resources on a virtual network.
- Always-On Monitoring & Adaptive Tuning: Application traffic patterns are continuously monitored for indicators of attacks and the system adjusts protection policies as traffic patterns change over time.
- L7 Protection with Application Gateway: Azure DDoS Protection and Application Gateway Web Application Firewall work together to defend against common web vulnerabilities.
- DDoS Protection, Telemetry, Monitoring, & Alerting: Gain detailed metrics of an attack via Azure Monitor with alerts configured for any metrics exposed by DDoS protection.
- 99.9% SLA & Cost Protection: DDoS Protection Standard is backed by 99.9% SLA and cost protection will provide resource credits for scale out during a documented attack.
DDoS protection for cloud environments is a critical tool for all cloud resources and applications. However, the importance of DDoS attack protection planning cannot be understated. Organizations should be sure to implement a tested and proven DDoS incident management response plan. Our InfoSec team can assist in the design of an effective InfoSec incident response plan – and help you navigate all your information security needs.
Cloud; Security