Government websites under siege? Four must-haves for DDoS protection

During DDoS attacks, malicious actors try to disrupt the normal traffic to a government network or service by overwhelming the surrounding infrastructure with a flood of Internet traffic. A successful DDoS attack can lead to data breaches with legal consequences, including fines and compliance violations.

With so many cybersecurity solutions on the market, what are some of the key considerations that government agencies should keep in mind when evaluating different DDoS protection solutions?

Given the unique characteristics of government agencies and the sensitive data they handle, Radware’s Vice President and Managing Director for APAC, Yaniv Hoffman, makes four recommendations for safeguarding critical systems and networks.

1. Protect against all DDoS attack vectors

As more government resources, like official websites and emergency response systems, become digital, it is critical for agencies to ensure uninterrupted user access.

With the increasing surge in attacks, that’s getting more difficult to do. According to Radware’s 2024 Global Threat Analysis Report, the number of DDoS attacks targeting customers in APAC climbed 260% between the close of 2022 and 2023.

Today’s DDoS attacks come in a variety of shapes and sizes, ranging from carpet bombing and burst attacks to domain name system (DNS) and zero-day attacks. Driven by world-wide geopolitical tensions, including conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, state-sponsored DDoS attacks have also become prevalent.

To thwart these attacks and others, agencies can tap into advanced technologies, such as Radware’s Cloud DDoS Protection Service, which is backed by dedicated, behavioral-based algorithms with advanced learning capabilities. Radware’s solution is designed to automatically and accurately distinguish between legitimate user traffic and attack traffic, while minimizing false positives, Hoffman said.

To help detect new attackers before they strike, Hoffman said, Radware’s solution is augmented by multiple threat intelligence feeds which aggregate data from Radware’s cloud scrubbing network and other sources. He explained that this way, customers can benefit from the crowdsourced intelligence of Radware’s entire customer base.

2. Protect against Web DDoS attacks

Hoffman noted that attackers are increasingly leveraging application layer attacks, or layer 7 (L7) web DDoS attacks, to target user-facing applications and networks, which include websites and mobile apps.

Such attacks are demanding an even more proactive and adaptive approach to cybersecurity, he added.

Traditional defences, such as network-based DDoS protection and web application firewalls, are ill-equipped to handle the randomised and dynamic nature of these emerging attacks without disrupting legitimate traffic.

“In order to be effective, today’s protections need to be real-time, scale to a magnitude higher than an on-premises solution and identify attacking requests without blocking legitimate traffic,” Hoffman said.

Hoffman pointed to key benefits of Radware’s Cloud Web DDoS Protection. The solution:

• Minimises false positives, through AI-driven, behavioural-based algorithms that quickly and accurately detect and block L7 DDoS attacks traffic without interrupting legitimate traffic.
   
• Prevents advanced threats and zero-day attacks, ranging from new L7 attack tools and vectors to larger-scale, sophisticated threats.
   
• Adapts protection immediately, by tapping on behavioural analysis and generating real-time signatures to immediately detect attacks and continuously adapt the mitigation to prevent downtime.
   
• Provides consistent protection, through an automated solution that blocks attacks consistently across all applications and environments.

3. Ensure scalability and resiliency against large scale attacks
 

Another key consideration for agencies is to ensure that their protection suites can be scaled up and are resilient enough to protect against multi-terabit attacks, Hoffman said.

To support customers, Radware has a network of more than 50 globally distributed cloud security service centers, which provide DDoS mitigation capable of absorbing even the largest volumetric attacks, he noted.

This June, Radware announced the launch of a new cloud security service center in France, which has extended its DDoS attack mitigation capacity to 15 terabits per second.

“The network is designed to help organisations reduce traffic latency as well as increase service redundancy and mitigation capacity. In addition, it will help increase resiliency and comply with offshore local data privacy requirements,” Hoffman said.

4. Maintain privacy and compliance

It is critical that protection solutions maintain citizen privacy, protect sensitive data, and comply with regulations, he observed.

Organizations are increasingly challenged by the rise in regulatory and industry compliance requirements, Hoffman noted.

Regulations, such as NIS2 and DORA in the EU, have specific compliance frameworks covering operational resilience, monitoring, and reporting.

“Industry standards such as PCI DSS 4.0, for example, include detailed requirements on the use of web application-level firewalls and protection against emerging cyberthreats,” Hoffman said.

Aside from detecting and preventing against a range of cyberattacks, Radware’s security solutions also offer ongoing monitoring and log management and detailed reporting and analytics – which can support regulatory compliance, he added.

“Such capabilities provide our customers critical insights, so they can make more informed decisions, continuously improve their security strategies, and meet regulatory requirements,” Hoffman explained.

Read the Radware Case Study for ASAC and how the solution guaranteed 100% Blocking of DDoS Attacks Against their Cloud Infrastructure. Please complete your details access the document: