NETSCOUT > Case Studies > Australian Cloud Provider Delivers Immediate Response to DDoS Attacks

Australian Cloud Provider Delivers Immediate Response to DDoS Attacks

Company Size

200-1,000

Region

America
Pacific

Country

Australia
United States

Product

Pravail® APS
Cloud Signaling™ technology

Tech Stack

Cloud Hosting
DDoS Protection

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Brand Awareness
Customer Satisfaction

Technology Category

Cybersecurity & Privacy - Network Security
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing

Applicable Industries

Telecommunications

Applicable Functions

Business Operation

Use Cases

Cybersecurity

Services

Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
Cybersecurity Services

About The Customer

Bulletproof Networks is a tier-one managed hosting provider in Australia. The organization uses virtualization technologies to provide hosted cloud environments for its enterprise and government customers. Bulletproof relies on the Pravail® Availability Protection System (“Pravail APS”) from Arbor Networks to help protect its customers from DDoS attacks that threaten service outage. Many of Bulletproof’s clients are hosting transactional Web sites where downtime can mean losing hundreds of thousands—potentially millions—of dollars in revenue. With Pravail APS, Bulletproof offers more reliable, onsite protection for the cloud environments it provides to customers. The company enhances this protection by partnering with its upstream service providers through Arbor’s Cloud Signaling™ technology. This enables Bulletproof to better address threats beyond the organization’s bandwidth threshold.

The Challenge

Bulletproof Networks, a tier-one managed hosting provider in Australia, was facing an increasing number of DDoS attacks on its network. Several of Bulletproof’s customers use its managed cloud service to host business-critical transactional websites. For these customers, site availability is critical to their existence; any amount of downtime can mean significant losses. Bulletproof also hosts a number of sites that are attractive targets for DDoS attacks. One of these sites, a technology forum, includes more than 300,000 active members who have been known to launch attacks at one another over disagreements. As a result, Bulletproof started to see an increasing number of DDoS attacks come across its network. To combat the attacks, Bulletproof put a process in place with its upstream providers. This process enabled the company to contact a provider during an attack to see if the provider could help block it from reaching the data center. The challenge with this approach was two-fold. First, the providers were not as quick to react to the attacks, causing a delay in mitigation and downtime for the hosted sites. Also, the only realistic way for the provider to assist was to blackhole the targeted site. While this stopped flooding to the Internet link, it still left the customer offline.

The Solution

Bulletproof deployed the Pravail® Availability Protection System (“Pravail APS”) from Arbor Networks in both its Australian and U.S. points of presence (POPs). The company selected Pravail APS for its ability to quickly identify and block DDoS attacks, as well as the level of detail it provides about the threat. Bulletproof also selected Arbor for its Cloud Signaling™ capability. This feature automatically alerts the upstream provider if Bulletproof is under attack, so the provider can assist with blocking the attack before it reaches the data center. Since deploying Pravail APS in November 2011, Bulletproof has been able to successfully mitigate multiple attacks and keep customer sites available to end users. In addition to bolstering the company’s brand as a mission-critical provider of managed hosting services, this has helped Bulletproof grow significantly since launching its managed hosting business and expand its customer base in the U.S. market.

Operational Impact

Able to block multiple attacks and provide more reliable, secure hosting services to customers.
Bolstered the company’s brand as a mission-critical provider of managed hosting services.
Helped Bulletproof grow significantly since launching its managed hosting business and expand its customer base in the U.S. market.

Quantitative Benefit