UPDATED 13:30 EDT / SEPTEMBER 09 2020

SECURITY

Targeting DDoS attacks as first and last line of data protection

Like a clogged freeway at rush hour, distributed denial-of-service (or DDoS attacks) can cause tremendous inconvenience when internet traffic slows to a crawl or ceases to move altogether.

In the COVID-19 era, DDoS attacks are escalating. From March 11 to April 11 of this year, NetScout Systems Inc. observed over 864,000 DDoS attacks, the single largest number it had seen for any previous 31-day period.

“It impacts everything running on the backbone or whatever facility this attack is flowing through,” said Tom Bienkowski (pictured), director of product marketing at NetScout Arbor. “The target of these attacks could be any enterprise, any large government. It’s very indiscriminate; anyone could be a potential target and they are.”

Bienkowski spoke with Stu Miniman, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how Arbor’s data-protection solution protects gateways and senses indications of compromise to prevent data breaches. (* Disclosure below.)

Stateless protection

Arbor Networks was acquired by NetScout in 2015, and the company released its Arbor Edge Defense security system three years later as a way to prevent DDoS attacks from overwhelming networks.

Malicious actors are constantly improving tools and looking to exploit new forms of attack. Exploiting vulnerabilities in a virtual private network is a common stateful approach used by attackers in DDoS attempts.

“The key to stopping these stateful attacks and protecting the VPN gateway is to put something on-premises that is stateless,” Bienkowski explained. “It has the ability to inspect packets using stateless processing technology. Our product — the Arbor Edge Defense — is designed to stop all types of attacks.”

The Edge Defense product is branded with a tagline of “First and Last Line of Smart, Automated Perimeter Defense.” This is based on the product’s ability to block inbound cyberthreats at internet scale and outbound communication to hacker domains.

“The first line is the ability to stop the inbound DDoS attack,” Bienkowski said. “Because Arbor Edge Defense sits just inside the router and outside the firewall, it is literally the last component in that cybersecurity chain. It also has the ability to intercept indicators of compromise, and this is going to help stop the proliferation of malware and, ultimately, avoid that data breach.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s CUBE Conversations. (* Disclosure: NetScout Systems Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither NetScout nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE

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