Partner Content: Superior service - keep customers online with easy-to-manage DDoS protection

Organisations that rely on the Internet to run their business, or serve their customers, are at growing risk from Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks. To ensure their online availability is not impacted by DDoS, they need a solution that keeps up with evolving attacks, is proactive, and enables them to extract meaningful real-time information on DDoS threats. However, not all DDoS solutions are created equal, so be sure to invest in the latest generation of protection.

To help give a sense of the scale of the DDoS challenge, over the course of 2022, Corero has observed a 640 per cent increase in Mirai-like botnet attacks, a 500 per cent increase in the share of IPv6-based attacks, and a 70 per cent increase in the share of TCP-based attacks.

It is also now easier than ever to launch attacks, with DDoS-for-hire services cheaply available, meaning anyone can launch an attack and even the smallest businesses can become a target. Many will find themselves struggling to mitigate and recover from attacks due to a lack of IT resources accentuated by the ongoing skills shortage.

Adding value

Among service providers, there's intense competition to add value to their core services, and churn can be a concern. Service uptime is a key factor for users, as even short periods of downtime can drastically impact business, as well as negatively affecting brand reputation, customer trust, and revenue.

There is an opportunity for service providers to offer customers support and holistic solutions that can be centrally managed and easily integrated into existing infrastructure. From a DDoS perspective, this means removing the need for manual analysis and traffic rerouting, to deliver comprehensive protection with none of the downtime traditionally associated with DDoS attacks.

According to research by CRN, the main motivations for outsourcing cyber security are better security capability, a lack of internal expertise, having a second set of eyes, and lower costs of delivery and ownership.

Combatting the new threat landscape

The DDoS threat comes in many forms, with different attack vectors requiring diverse defense techniques. Historically, managing DDoS protection solutions has been a complex task.

Service providers need solutions that offer flexible deployment and automatic protection. Solutions must cover on-premises, hybrid, and cloud infrastructures without the need for specialised knowledge. In short, solutions should work in the background to protect customers without creating a management burden.

The increasingly sophisticated attacks adversaries are launching can evade legacy detect and mitigate solutions. As well as not offering adequate protection, legacy DDoS solutions can be resource-intensive as they require highly trained personnel to monitor traffic.

In contrast, real-time, automatic DDoS protection technology removes the need to manually monitor traffic in order to remove DDoS packets. As a result, the time from detection to protection is reduced to seconds and downtime is prevented.

Meeting customer needs

The right DDoS defence tool will go beyond offering reliable protection. Having a centralised view not only enables providers to monitor networks and identify threats, it can also deliver tenant portal dashboards that provide customers with visibility into the type of DDoS traffic targeting their network and the attacks that have been blocked, meaning actionable intelligence is gained to enhance future defences. By providing customers with detailed insights, service providers can easily demonstrate the value of the DDoS protection they are receiving.

In the increasingly competitive market, service providers must also demonstrate a commitment to their customers. According to research by CRN, good interpersonal relationships, being true to their word, and being easy to do business with are all qualities that organisations value in partners.

By showing a detailed knowledge of customers' DDoS protection needs and personalising services to meet them, as well as being on-hand to offer technical support when needed, lasting partnerships can be built, reducing customer churn, and increasing revenue.

Partners offering always-on, real-time DDoS solutions for a monthly fee will leave users confident they are fully protected, as packets are automatically detected and seamlessly mitigated, freeing up IT teams to focus on other business areas.

Eliminating the need to manage multiple complex solutions, in addition to making it easy to onboard customers while defining and assigning DDoS protection service levels, service providers can demonstrate an ongoing commitment to the mitigation of DDoS attacks.

To find out more about Corero's latest research into this space, click here.

This post was funded by Corero.