Cyberattacks are becoming more frequent and volatile. In fact, a NETSCOUT report revealed a surge in both application-layer and volumetric DDoS attacks – a 43% and 30% increase, respectively. This trend is further exacerbated by the rise of readily available "DDoS-for-hire" services. These services have lowered the barrier to entry for malicious actors, which makes it easier for even those with limited technical expertise to launch devastating attacks.

We all know disrupted services cripple businesses. They lead to financial losses, reputational damage and even loss of customer trust. Recognizing the gravity of this threat, the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency issued a cybersecurity advisory. This advisory served as a reminder of the critical need for cybersecurity controls. It emphasized the importance of implementing effective measures to prevent and detect malicious activity.

To act, NETSCOUT, a provider of performance management, cybersecurity and DDoS attack protection solutions, updated its Arbor Edge Defense (AED) and Arbor Enterprise Manager (AEM) products as part of its Adaptive DDoS Protection Solution to combat AI-enabled DDoS threats and protect critical IT infrastructure.

“Adaptive DDoS Protection provides customers with a sophisticated feature set designed to stop the ever-evolving threats to critical IT infrastructure, which has increased by 55% over the last four years,” said Scott Iekel-Johnson, AVP, DDoS and Threat Intelligence at NETSCOUT. “We’re continually adding new capabilities to our solution to help organizations protect assets anywhere, including on-premises, in a private data center, or a public cloud through a single solution.”

NETSCOUT uses artificial intelligence and machine learning across its product suite. The core of this lies in the ATLAS Threat Intelligence Feed, a global system that monitors over 550 Tbps of internet traffic in real-time. This vast data stream, collected from over 500 ISPs and 2,000+ enterprise sites worldwide, fuels AI/ML algorithms within the ATLAS cloud. These algorithms continuously analyze traffic patterns, identify emerging threats and update the threat intelligence feed in real-time. 

NETSCOUT also integrates AI/ML within its AED and AEM solutions. This enables a closed-loop system that automatically analyzes DDoS attacks, identifies new attack vectors and provides tailored mitigation recommendations. The system can even automatically apply these recommendations, which enhances the speed and effectiveness of DDoS response.

Additional enhancements include holistic management and visibility into blocking non-DDoS threats, a new appliance that supports up to 200 Gbps of DDoS attack mitigation capacity and high-performance decryption, and Virtual AED’s extended support for Microsoft (News - Alert) Azure public cloud environments, in addition to AWS Cloud, for unified hybrid-cloud DDoS attack protection.

To summarize it all, the combination of AI/ML with the threat intelligence gathered by ATLAS means that NETSCOUT delivers a completely automated DDoS protection solution. This solution minimizes downtime, protects critical business services and provides top-tier security for both on-premises and cloud environments.