Discover how AI-driven prevention is reshaping DDoS defense strategies.
Radware is renowned for its highly effective, touchless mitigation of DDoS attacks using advanced traditional techniques, successfully blocking the vast majority of threats automatically. However, a new wave of AI-driven, sophisticated attacks can occasionally bypass even this dense layer of protection, demanding costly and time-consuming human intervention. The prevention Module, powered by Radware’s cloud AI SoC Xpert, introduces a proactive approach that predicts and blocks emerging threats before they escalate. By continuously learning from legitimate network activity and deploying intelligent filters in real-time, this solution further strengthens resilience in cybersecurity.
Learn more about how the cloud-based AI leads the shift from reactive to prevention defense in Yaron’s latest blog post: AI-Driven Prevention: The Next Evolution in DDoS Defense read the full article below:
Introduction
Cybersecurity is evolving. Traditional reactive defenses, waiting for an attack and then responding - are no longer enough. Modern DDoS attacks are highly randomized, sophisticated, and increasingly AI-driven, allowing them to bypass even advanced mitigation systems. Radware’s AI SoC Xpert Preventive Module changes the game by introducing a proactive approach that anticipates threats before they strike.
The Challenge
AI-driven DDoS attacks overwhelm conventional defenses, causing downtime and SLA breaches. Enterprises and service providers need a predictive layer of security that learns from legitimate traffic and applies this intelligence to block anomalies in real time.
Concept
The Preventive Module introduces a smart approach to cybersecurity by profiling legitimate traffic during normal operations across multiple dimensions. In addition to generating negative protection signatures that block known malicious traffic, the module also enforces preventive protection during an attack by allowing only traffic that has been previously identified as legitimate. This dual-layer strategy provides enterprises and service providers with enhanced resilience, reduced exposure to risk, and a competitive edge in today’s dynamic digital and AI landscape.
The Preventive Module Cloud Powered Solution
The Preventive Module is fundamentally cloud-powered, and this architecture is essential to its advanced AI-driven capabilities. By leveraging the cloud, the solution can create and maintain sophisticated preventive traffic filters that adapt in real time to evolving DDoS threats. At its core, the module employs multi-stage algorithms to extract, refine, and optimize traffic patterns for immediate mitigation. These processes require the aggregation and analysis of massive volumes of network traffic data, across protocols, ports, IP addresses, geographic regions, and more.
Radware Cloud’s scalable computing and storage resources are vital for several reasons. First, the algorithms perform complex operations such as pattern extraction, recursive refinement, and statistical modeling, which would be impractical to run efficiently on premises due to their high computational demands. Tasks like set cover optimization, integer linear programming, and historical trend analysis, especially when analyzing data from diverse, large-scale enterprise environments, are best handled in the cloud, where parallel processing and rapid rule generation can be achieved seamlessly.
We recognize that some organizations have concerns about cloud adoption, particularly regarding data confidentiality. To address this, all data exchanged between on-premises devices and the cloud is encrypted using IPsec, ensuring that sensitive information remains private and secure during transmission. This means that while the heavy lifting of analysis and rule generation happens in the cloud, the confidentiality and integrity of your network data are rigorously protected.
Ultimately, the cloud-powered nature of the Preventive Module enables real-time adaptation, high-fidelity protection, and efficient scaling, capabilities that would be either cost-prohibitive or technically unfeasible with purely on-premises solutions. This approach offers enterprises and service providers robust DDoS defense while maintaining the highest standards of data security.
How It Works
- Data Gathering: DefensePro X Mitigation devices collect S-Flow statistics and send them to the CyberController management system, which then relays this data to the cloud-based service.
- Pattern Creation: The Preventive Module’s AI analyzes historical traffic during different periods, such as morning, afternoon, evening and night and distinguishes between workdays and weekends, to generate preventive rules tailored for each policy or protected asset.
- Rule Distribution: CyberController management system, deploys these preventive rules received by the cloud Preventive Module to DefensePro X mitigation units according to their assigned protected assets, automatically activating filters when an attack occurs.
- Automated Updates: Preventive filter patterns are regularly and automatically updated by the CyberController management system, eliminating the need for manual intervention.
Diagram: Complete Workflow of the Preventive Module for On-Premises Deployments
Key Features
- Cloud-Powered Intelligence: Operates within a robust cloud environment, offering substantial processing capacity.
- Continuous Adaptive Learning: Gathers real-time traffic data from local DefensePro units or directly from Edge routers in out-of-path setups.
- Advanced Pattern Analysis: Determines legitimate traffic profiles using attributes such as IP address, port numbers, TCP flags, packet size, geographic location, protocol, TTL, and Autonomous System Numbers (ASNs).
- Immediate Action: CyberController refreshes filters in as little as five seconds for each request.
- Flexible Customization: Enables users to establish permanent system rules and also modify, add, or remove rules for precise control and fine-tuning.
- High Scalability: CyberController supports up to 1,000 simultaneous API sessions, ensuring smooth operation across large-scale deployments.
Deployment Topologies
Inline Mode: In this setup, Radware’s DefensePro devices are positioned directly within the network path, ensuring that all traffic is monitored and processed as it passes through these devices.
Out-of-Path Mode: Here, traffic data is gathered from the network’s routing infrastructure without placing DefensePro X mitigation devices directly in the traffic flow, allowing for flexible integration and monitoring.
Business Advantages
The Preventive Module offers clear value to both enterprises and service providers:
- Minimized Downtime & SLA Costs: By proactively filtering threats, service interruptions are significantly reduced, helping your business avoid costly SLA penalties.
- Streamlined Operations: Automated filter updates reduce the need for manual oversight, thereby decreasing the risk of human errors and enhancing efficiency.
- Enhanced Client Confidence: Displaying a robust security stance reassures customers, strengthening trust and fostering loyalty.
- Adaptable Licensing Options: Choose from X, Plus, or MSSP licenses, allowing you to tailor deployment to your organization’s specific needs.
- Supports Business Expansion: The solution scales effortlessly, from small businesses using DefensePro Virtual appliances to large enterprises managing numerous physical devices.