Intelligent CISO Issue 50 | Page 65

BUSINESS SURVEILLANCE the majority of DDoS attacks are now relatively small and short in duration but can still have a big impact on Business Continuity , companies need this type of dedicated , always-on DDoS protection solution to prevent attacks from doing damage .
SmartWall leverages an innovative and automated , multi-stage detection and mitigation pipeline to ensure the highest possible protection . It ensures that legitimate traffic isn ’ t affected by damaging false positives or any significant increase network latency .
Many alternative DDoS solutions on the market rely on off-site , cloud-based scrubbing technologies and take more than 10 minutes to activate the needed mitigation , Leslie said . By that time , an attack might already have done damage in terms of service downtime . SmartWall handles this on-premises so the process is much faster , drastically reducing the likelihood of service interruptions , he said .
Corero installed the SmartWall DDoS Protection platform within a matter of hours and after about a week of testing Columbia Wireless had the system running on live traffic . SmartWall is installed between the ISP ’ s Edge routers and its upstream providers ’ links .
Since the time the company deployed SmartWall , its network has received about 10 DDoS attacks “ and Corero has effectively blocked all of them ,” Leslie said .
The technology ’ s automated email notification system , Leslie ’ s favourite feature , keeps him informed about attacks on the Columbia Wireless network . This gives him greater visibility than ever into DDoS attacks and their resolution .
“ I have seen the Corero SmartWall email me – in plain English – about an attack that it ’ s in the process of blocking , when it caught the attack , what kind of attack it is and what the victim IP was on my network ,” Leslie said .
“ It also emailed me to let me know when the attack has stopped . I can ’ t believe how many attacks there are that we didn ’ t even notice before .”
The system also includes an analytics capability with a graphical interface that lets users view attacks in great detail .
“ Basically , it ’ s a fully automated system that lets me stop thinking and worrying about the next DDoS attack and get back to life and growing my business ,” Leslie said . “ Among the biggest benefits of SmartWall are its ease of use and reliability .”
Ultimately , all Columbia Wireless clients will benefit from the DDoS-protected network , because such attacks made up about 75 % of the company ’ s overall network outages and 90 % of outages during business hours . u
“ We have a failover optical bypass installed with the Corero SmartWall system also , so that in the event the SmartWall loses power or suffers a failure , it will failover so traffic can still route ,” Leslie said .
Columbia is providing the DDoS protection capability as a value-added offering . “ We wanted to make sure our entire network didn ’ t go down because of one IP on our network having a DDoS attack ,” Leslie said .
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