Avnet arms resellers for mid-market DDoS war

Distributor's 24/7 service will allow resellers to respond to attacks within four hours

Avnet has launched an attack control service designed to help resellers fight the recent rise in mid-market Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

Analysts and vendors all agree that the DDoS prevention market is booming as attackers increasingly set their sights lower down the market. According to Infonetics, the market rocketed 52 per cent last year, while recent figures from DDoS vendor Prolexic suggest there was a 25 per cent year-on-year rise in DDoS attacks in the first quarter of 2012.

Bruce Hockin, head of solutions strategy at Avnet Technology Solutions UK, said: "DDoS attacks are becoming more commonplace and no longer just target telecom carriers, major corporations and government departments and agencies."

Backed by DDoS mitigation vendor Webscreen, Avnet's new 24/7 service is designed to enable resellers to offer a four-hour response to a DDoS attack on mid-market enterprise datacentres.

In the event of a malicious DDoS attack, the end user can call in an engineer equipped with Webscreen technology to shut down the attack while ensuring priority networks are unaffected. The annual fee charged will be paid out of operational expense and will mean a healthy repeatable revenue stream for partners, Avnet said.

Paul Bristow, chief operating officer at Webscreen, said: "The four-hour response DDoS attack control service provides Avnet business partners with a cost-effective, ‘peace-of-mind' solution against the ever-growing threat of a DDoS attack."