Things are changing fast; as of March 17, 2020, an unprecedented number of people worldwide were in actual lockdown (across Malaysia, Spain, Italy, France, and El Salvador), and it seems like schools globally are shutting down. People are being asked to stay and (if possible) work from home.
Most CISOs and IT security professionals you speak to today are racing to scale up their remote access services to support their entire employee base so business continuity isn’t impacted. In contrast, employees connect to corporate IT from home. This spans a wide range of possible activities, from defining permissions, and security and expanding infrastructure to setting up remote access for the majority of employees who usually do not need it. Archana Kesavan, director @ ThousandEyes, was quoted by eWeek saying that to complicate things, “IT support is not prepared for remote workers in such a large amount.”
To ensure this remote access doesn’t compromise corporate security, companies like Amazon are looking to use services like Virtual Private Networks (a.k.a VPN) that are typically used for a small percentage of employees who regularly need remote access.
A Freeway Running Through Your Pillow
Think of the street outside your bedroom window that now has to support the rush hour traffic of a 5-lane highway overnight. Like a pyramid that’s been flipped, VPNs and remote access services have gone from supporting a fraction of corporate activity to becoming the main channel through which enterprises communicate with their employees.
VPNs in the COVID-19 pandemic have become business continuity lifelines. While it’s anyone’s guess how long this period will continue, all the experts agree that it will get worse before it gets any better and could last for months.
The VPN Security Achilles Heel
Business continuity plans are meant to prevent denial of service. Since VPNs are usually used in a limited fashion, the impact of an unusable VPN on the overall business continuity usually is negligible. But not anymore. Inoperable VPNs will effectively grind a large part of the business to a halt.
Distributed Denial of Service – VPN Style
Due to the negligible risk VPNs usually pose to business continuity, companies may not have bothered to validate that their DDoS mitigation solutions were configured correctly to protect them. In over six years of working with leading Fortune 1000 and Global enterprises to validate & strengthen their DDoS mitigation solutions, MazeBolt has never seen a request to validate DDoS mitigation configurations for VPN services. There was never a good reason to do so. There is one now.
The problem enterprises face is daunting because no single default DDoS mitigation configuration setting works for all VPNs. This means that companies need to validate their potentially vulnerable DDoS mitigation configuration against multiple possible DDoS attack vectors at a time when maintenance windows are hard to find.
Helping Secure Business Continuity Through Coronavirus
MazeBolt, an Israeli cyber security company, developed the RADAR™, designed exactly for challenges like this, and launched it in 2019. Working transparently 24/7 without impacting ongoing operations gives enterprises real-time validation of their DDoS mitigation solutions. This way, vulnerable DDoS configuration mismatches can be continuously identified and resolved in real-time and re-validated immediately. This is equivalent to conducting a 3-D CT scan on an Olympic runner while she sprints. Based on patented technology, the RADAR™ ensures DDoS mitigation solutions always work as expected to mitigate denial of service attacks.
Update: Free SaaS-based Limited Disruptive Validation Offering
To help secure business continuity across our ecosystem, MazeBolt is extending a helping hand to all organizations. We will validate your organization’s VPN security against DDoS attacks at no cost or with commercial compensation.
Using RADAR™ patented technology to limit disruption, we’re offering the following:
- A 20-minute DDoS validation of VPN services
- Limited disruption to ongoing business operations (Based on DDoS RADAR™)
- Automatic cut-off technology (Based on DDoS RADAR™)
- Coverage of most likely VPN DDoS attacks
- Vendor Report explaining how to close vulnerabilities detected
Please submit your registration, and we’ll contact you to schedule the validation.
About MazeBolt
MazeBolt is an innovation leader in cybersecurity and part of the DDoS mitigation space. We offer complete DDoS risk detection and elimination and work with any mitigation system to provide full end-to-end coverage. We also support organizations in avoiding downtime and closing DDoS vulnerabilities before an attack happens.
