The Power of 2: Why 2-Tier DDoS Protection is Critical for Your Business

A 2-tier DDoS solution combining on-premises and cloud-based protection is the best practice recommended by industry experts, including Gartner. By utilizing both solutions, organizations can benefit from the strengths of each, including the ability to mitigate attacks closer to the source with on-premises protection and the scalability and flexibility of cloud-based protection. This approach provides a comprehensive and effective defense against DDoS attacks; it reduces the risk of downtime and damage to the organization’s reputation.

As the threat landscape continues to evolve, it is important for organizations to adopt best practices like a 2-tier DDoS solution to stay ahead of attackers and ensure the continuity of their operations.

The Unstoppable Rise of DDoS Attacks

Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks have been a common and growing threat for many years and cause significant disruption to organizations. In 2022, DDoS attacks continued to be a major issue. The cyber landscape was marked by a sharp increase in malicious activities and DDoS attacks, particularly targeting organizations in the financial, healthcare and technology sectors.

Here’s proof: Radware’s Cloud DDoS Service recorded a 233% growth in blocked malicious events compared to the previous year, which saw the number of DDoS attacks grow by 150%. The total attack volume reached 4.44PBps, a 32% increase from 2021. The largest recorded attack in 2022 was 1.46TBps, a staggering 2.8 times larger than the largest attack recorded in 2021.

The frequency of attacks also saw a significant uptick, with organizations mitigating an average of 29.3 attacks per day in Q4 of 2022. This was a 3.5 times increase compared to the previous year.

Attacks not only grew in number, but also in complexity and sophistication. With the new norm of DDoS peaks at 300-500Gbps directed towards governments, critical infrastructure and SaaS verticals, DDoS attacks included over twenty different vectors, including, but not limited to, UDP, TCP, ICMP, SYN, DNS, known server vulnerabilities, handshake violations, randomized floods, and more.

In an ever-growing DDoS threat landscape, you must make sure your protection is future-proof, complete and zero-day ready. A recommended practice for DDoS mitigation is a 2-tier solution; it allows customers full control and optimal security coverage for DDoS.  

What is a 2-tier DDoS Solution?

A 2-tier DDoS solution is a hybrid architecture that combines both cloud-based protection and on-premises protection to create a comprehensive defense against DDoS attacks. The cloud-based protection is designed to handle large-scale volumetric attacks, while on-premises protection provides defense against targeted attacks or application-layer attacks that require more granular inspection.

What are the benefits of a 2-tier DDoS solution?

• Improved Resiliency: A 2-tier DDoS solution provides greater resiliency by distributing the load between two different layers of protection. If one layer is compromised or overwhelmed, the other layer continues to provide protection.
• Enhanced Visibility: On-premises protection provides greater visibility into network traffic, allowing for more granular inspection of traffic patterns and the ability to identify and block suspicious activity more quickly.
• Cost-Effective: Cloud-based protection can be more cost-effective for large volumetric attacks, while on-premises protection can be more cost-effective for smaller, application-layer attacks.
• Compliance: Many organizations must comply with data privacy regulations, which can limit the use of cloud-based solutions. A 2-tier DDoS solution allows for greater flexibility to meet compliance requirements.
• Customization: A 2-tier DDoS solution can be customized to meet the specific needs of an organization, providing a more tailored approach to DDoS protection.

What are the key values of on-prem DDoS protection and why you need it?

• Detection Accuracy: On-premises protection optimizes detection accuracy due to outgoing traffic visibility. Correlating outgoing with incoming traffic allows for accurate distinction between good and bad traffic, which means more accurate mitigation of DDoS attacks.
• Outgoing threats: On-premises protection helps protect organizations from internal threats, data leakages and reputation risks due to network abuse. This is done by denying malicious, outgoing traffic of bots, malware, C&C, and more.
• Low latency: On-premises protection can provide lower latency for critical applications; even a small delay here can cause significant problems.
• Data Privacy: As mentioned earlier, data privacy regulations may limit the use of cloud-based solutions, making on-premises protection a better option for organizations with these requirements.

Align Your DDoS Solution to a Best Practice

Don’t allow blind spots in your security posture. Make sure you have full visibility and control, and complete security coverage and data privacy with on-premises protection. A behavioral security solution helps you automate your security policy and optimize your ongoing costs. Add cloud-based protection for large volumetric smoke screen attacks that risk your data by hiding targeted attacks that can be blocked by your on-premises protection.

For More Information

If you are wondering how you can deploy a 2-tier DDoS solution and benefit from both on-prem and cloud-based protection, go here for more information about DDoS solutions. And please feel free to contact one of our cybersecurity professionals for more information about keeping your organization and employees safe from cyber threats. They’d love to hear from you.

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