DDoS Protection

DDoS, short for distributed denial-of-service, is a type of cyber-attack that overwhelms and eventually shuts down access to a network, effectively keeping others from reaching it. The most common way to do this is the attacker gathering “zombie” computers that they can direct in botnets to flood the target network. Sometimes this is done through pure brute force, sometimes by targeting a weaker layer of a website and exploiting features. Sometimes it is both of those things to make it harder to stop. The end result is usually the same: the business is offline, and there’s no way to know for sure when the DDoS attack will end. Between the frantic IT staff trying to block the wave of bad traffic, the apologies and frustrations of affected companies, and the online complaints of clients, the affect of an attack can be substantial and often a devastating loss for a company, adding up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit loss and collateral damage from the attack.

The reasons that a DDoS attack can occur are as multiple as the people it affects. There really is no particular type of business that isn’t a target for a DDoS attack. They can happen to government services just as easily as to a video game voice chat. The DDoS attacker might be doing it for fun or as a statement against their target. They could do it for a ransom against the company they’re keeping from doing business, or be a competitor trying to take the credibility out of their opposition. They could also be doing it as a distraction to cover up another type of cyberattack.

Staminus absorbs all attacks using a globally distributed cluster of SecurePort systems, using a worldwide BGP anycast network of datacenters. This strategic defense network is called SecureNet. SecureNet is able to leverage its immense global network capacity as well as racks of security appliances to handle any type of attack traffic. We absorb the attack traffic at the edge of our network, scrub it, and deliver clean traffic back to the customer via GRE, Proxy (DNS change), pseudo-wire (MPLS), or private interconnect.

Once data passes through the SecurePort DDoS mitigation module, it is handed off to the SecurePort IDPS (intrusion detection and protection system) module. This is similar to a web application firewall except it is not limited to web applications. It analyzes packet data for complex application attacks such as HTTP, SSL, DNS, Mail, FTP, and other notable applications. Ultimately, the legitimate traffic flows through the SecurePort Firewall module which blocks the malicious attack. This multi-level approach allows for fewer false-positives, and an overall smoother experience for our clients’ networks.