A proactive approach to DDoS attack prevention

The increase in the frequency, volume and sophistication of DDoS attacks has helped boost the awareness of these threats among Asia-Pacific (APAC) enterprises.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan finds that the market earned revenues of US$165.6 million in 2014 and estimates this to reach US$419.1 million in 2018.

Enterprises across the region are looking to upgrade their security infrastructure and adopt dedicated DDoS protection solutions to cope with application-based attacks. While the uptake of DDoS solutions has been reactive – enterprises have mostly deployed solutions after being attacked – more companies are now taking a proactive approach to attack prevention.

“The rising reliance on online services to do business has pushed organizations in APAC to use DDoS protection solutions to minimize the risks of being attacked and maintain a strong Web presence,” said Frost & Sullivan Information & Communication Technologies Research Analyst Vu Anh Tien. “By adopting DDoS protection solutions, organizations will not only protect themselves, but also their customers.”

With the advent of the Internet of Things and the explosion of mobile devices, service providers (SPs), including telcos, Internet SPs and mobile operators, have found it necessary to implement DDoS protection solutions. Otherwise, hackers can easily take advantage of the increase in connected devices and the deployment of new mobile connection technologies such as Long Term Evolution to launch large-scale attacks.

In the event of severe cyber-attacks, enterprises could face a loss of revenue, profit and productivity due to the downtime of their services. DDoS protection solutions are crucial to prevent this eventuality, which could also damage the reputation/brand of victim companies and lead to the permanent loss of customers to rivals.

Due to the recent economic recession, however, APAC enterprises have had to cut back on their IT budgets. Most regional enterprises, particularly small and medium businesses, have not been able to afford expensive DDoS products and are thus seen to be adopting managed anti-DDoS protection services to save costs.

Cautious spending sentiments are also being driven by the complexity in deployment and maintenance of DDoS protection solutions. Some enterprises just do not have the internal technical expertise to configure and effectively manage their on-premises DDoS solutions. Thus, they have begun to consider other available approaches, such as making use of DDoS mitigation features on security and networking appliances like Intrusion Prevention Systems, firewalls, Web Application Firewalls, and Application Delivery Controllers.

“Moving forward, consolidation will become rampant in the APAC DDoS protection market,” noted Tien. “The market will see greater integration of DDoS solutions with high-performance security architecture so that volumetric traffic and sophisticated layer-7 attacks can be effectively tackled.”

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