DDoS attack

Prevent a DDoS attack with Akamai.

A distributed denial-of-service attack, or DDoS attack, is an attempt to overwhelm a website or online service with traffic from multiple sources in order to render it unavailable to users. As organizations increasingly move more data and business processes online, the scale and frequency of denial of service attacks continue to rise. To defend against a DDoS attack, organizations need simple, fast and effective protection that can guard their web presence, protect their brand and secure their revenues.

Kona DDoS Defender from Akamai provides a highly effective cloud security solution to stop the threat of a DDoS attack. Combining the security expertise of a 24x7 security operations center (SOC) with Akamai’s highly scalable Intelligent Platform™, Kona DDoS Defender ensures that organizations can continue to provide the best online experience for users even when the business is under attack.

How Akamai stops a DDoS attack

Scale is the key to Akamai’s effectiveness in preventing a DDoS attack. Akamai’s globally distributed Intelligent Platform has the capacity to process 15 to 30 percent of global web traffic on a daily basis and offers the scalability required to handle even the largest DDoS attack. When an attack occurs, Kona DDoS Defender automatically deflects a network-layer DDoS attack such as a UDP or SYN flood, while providing application security against DDoS attacks such as HTTP GET and POST floods by absorbing them at the edge of the network, preventing the attack from reaching the application origin.

Capabilities for preventing a DDoS attack.

  • Adaptive rate controls. Akamai enables organizations to automatically protect against an application-layer DDoS attack by monitoring and controlling the rate of requests. Using behavior-based rules, adaptive rate controls enable organizations to respond to spikes in requests immediately, blocking attackers based on IP address and mitigating slow POST attacks.
  • 24x7 Security Operations Center. Akamai’s SOC helps to detect, analyze and mitigate developing attacks, coordinating and communicating with an organization’s onsite IT security staff.
  • Complete DDoS attack support. Akamai provides a fully managed security service to guide organizational response to the threat of a DDoS attack. Akamai experts perform real-time analysis of ongoing attacks, fine tune existing rules, create custom rules when needed, and adapt to changing vectors and multi-dimensional threats.
  • Security Monitor. This Akamai tool provides real-time visibility into security events and enables IT administrators to drill down into attack alerts for a better understanding of the developing threat.
  • Logging. Akamai’s Log Delivery Service (LDS) enables organizations to integrate event logs with security information and event management (SIEM) and other reporting solutions.

Learn more about how to improve DDoS protection for your organization, and about Akamai’s web application firewall and other cloud services and solutions.