The traditional approach to identifying and remediating DDoS vulnerabilities involves a process that is reactive, resource-intensive, and can still result in downtime for the enterprise. When a DDoS vulnerability is targeted and exploited, the experience for the enterprise and for the DDoS mitigation vendor develops as follows:
The Start of an Attack
An enterprise discovers that it is under attack when it experiences downtime or degraded performance in its critical services – such as the website, API, or application. Customers may complain, reporting issues with accessing services, which alerts the enterprise’s internal teams. Here’s what happens next:
- Incident escalation: The enterprise’s IT or security operations team escalates the issue to its DDoS mitigation vendor, typically under the terms of their DDoS mitigation Service Level Agreement (SLA).
- Collaboration with the DDoS mitigation vendor: The enterprise provides information about the attack, such as what services were affected and what traffic anomalies were observed – and shares logs and timestamps. This enables the DDoS mitigation vendor to analyze the attack and identify the exploited vulnerability.
- Operational impact: For industries like banking or e-commerce, downtime directly leads to revenue loss. Moreover, the attack impacts internal resource allocation. The enterprise’s teams focus on mitigation, recovery, and user communication instead of regular operations.
- Post-incident review: The enterprise relies on the DDoS mitigation vendor’s report to understand what went wrong and apply lessons learned for future prevention.
The Response of the DDoS Mitigation Vendor
The DDoS mitigation vendor’s system detects abnormal traffic patterns and initiates automated blocking based on pre-set rules. If the attack bypasses these rules, the DDoS mitigation vendor escalates to the Security Operations Center (SOC). At this point, several things start to happen:
- Mitigation Actions: The SOC team analyzes the attack to identify the specific DDoS vulnerability exploited, for example, misconfigured thresholds or missing policies. The team adjusts configurations – for example, Scrubbing Center thresholds and WAF rules – to block the malicious traffic. These actions are reactive and may take time to implement.
- Communication: The DDoS mitigation vendor updates the enterprise regularly during the attack, explaining the mitigation progress and any residual impact.
- Post-Attack Analysis: The DDoS mitigation vendor conducts a Root Cause Analysis, identifying what allowed the attack to succeed and recommending fixes. The team implements configuration updates, applying immediate fixes to block similar attacks in the future. They provide the enterprise with an incident report with information such as attack details (volume, type, duration), vulnerabilities exploited, and actions taken to mitigate.
- Long-Term Implications: Recurring incidents might impacts the vendor’s reputation, raising concerns about their effectiveness. Moreover, the process of responding to a damaging DDoS attack is a strain on resources. Frequent reactive fixes consume significant time of the SOC, and may affect the team’s work with other clients.
A Step Back: Understanding DDoS Attacks
The only way a DDoS attack causes damage is by exploiting a DDoS vulnerability. In other words:
- The Root Cause of the Damage: A DDoS vulnerability is a gap or weakness in the protection setup – such as misconfigured rules, unprotected endpoints, or outdated thresholds – that attackers can exploit to overwhelm the system.
- Dynamic Environments Create Risks: Changes in the network, such as adding new applications, opening ports, or updating APIs, can introduce new DDoS vulnerabilities. If these gaps aren’t proactively managed, they become the points of failure during an attack.
- No Vulnerabilities, No Damage: If all protection layers are properly configured and validated against evolving threats, there is no opportunity for attackers to bypass defenses or cause damage.
Ensure Your DDoS Protections Really are Protecting You
A new approach to remediating vulnerabilities is to find them proactively – reducing both operational and reputational risks for the enterprise and DDoS mitigation vendor. RADAR’s method of DDoS vulnerability management stops damaging DDoS downtime because of:
- No Dependence on SLA Guarantees: Identify and report DDoS vulnerabilities to DDoS mitigation vendors before the attack happens.
- Streamlined Collaboration: The DDoS mitigation vendor and the enterprise can proactively remediate the issue, reducing the need for escalation during attacks.
- No Damaging Downtime: With vulnerabilities already addressed, the attacks are blocked automatically, preserving business continuity.
- Continuous Validation: Configurations stay aligned with the dynamic network, minimizing future incidents.
RADAR enables enterprises to identify and remediate DDoS vulnerabilities across known attack vectors. This means DDoS defenses operate at their full potential, blocking malicious traffic effectively.
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