DDoS control as an appliance

DDoS attacks, when a large number of compromised systems attack a target such as a website and overwhelm it with activity that causes the target to become unresponsive,thereby denying legitimate users access to the system, have become far more frequent of late. Nearly 50 percent of enterprise IT leaders report that their organisations have experienced one or more DDoS attack in the last three years, according to independent research commissioned by CenturyLink Technology Solutions last year.

Now the company has added an on-site Appliance implementation of its cloud-delivered DDoS Mitigation Service to expand the options available to IT departments needing to defend their business systems against DDoS attack traffic before it can impact the organisation’s infrastructure.

A team of security experts monitor CenturyLink’s global mitigation system, which analyses traffic 24/7 and diverts and scrubs potentially malicious packets. The solution protects environments whether they are accessed via CenturyLink’s network, one of CenturyLink’s more than 55 datacentres, customer premises or a third-party datacentre or network.

“DDoS attacks continue to evolve, becoming more sophisticated in scale and complexity and resulting in greater downtime for organisations,” said Chris Richter, vice president, managed security products and services, at CenturyLink Technology Solutions. “We designed our DDoS service to enable global protection through multiple cleansing centres around the world and flexible commercial terms. With the integration of a network-based solution and an on-site appliance, we can further serve businesses that require always-on mitigation and deliver protection for multiple third-party networks while providing full visibility and reporting across all of their networks.”

CenturyLink’s DDoS Mitigation Service, with the new mitigation appliance option, employs advanced layers of defence, improving availability of customer’s infrastructure and reducing the likelihood of future DDoS attacks. It also keeps security costs manageable, with a pricing model based on usage and no required hardware or software. The services are delivered on virtual, dedicated and colocation platforms.