Human Rights Watch Ensures DDoS Protection with CDNetworks
Customer Company Size
Mid-size Company
Region
- America
- Asia
- Europe
Country
- United States
- China
- Japan
- Singapore
- United Kingdom
Product
- CDNetworks DNS Acceleration
- CDNetworks Content Acceleration
- CDNetworks SSL Acceleration
Tech Stack
- Drupal
- New Relic
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Brand Awareness
- Customer Satisfaction
Technology Category
- Cybersecurity & Privacy - Cloud Security
- Networks & Connectivity - Network Management & Analysis Software
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
Use Cases
- Cybersecurity
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
- Cybersecurity Services
About The Customer
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is a private American non-governmental organization (NGO) founded in 1978. Initially established to monitor the Soviet Union's compliance with the Helsinki Accords, HRW has grown into a worldwide leader in the fight for and protection of human rights. The organization operates from offices on five continents, with 400 employees dedicated to protecting the human rights of people around the world. HRW stands with victims and activists to prevent discrimination, uphold political freedom, protect people from inhumane conduct in wartime, and bring offenders to justice. The HRW website is a critical tool for the organization, allowing it to disseminate information about human rights abuses worldwide. However, the website is occasionally targeted by individuals, governments, and organizations seeking to obstruct HRW's efforts.
The Challenge
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is a global leader in the protection of human rights, with 400 employees operating from offices on 5 continents. The HRW website is critical to the organization's success, as it allows them to disseminate information about human rights abuses worldwide. However, the website is occasionally targeted by individuals, governments, and organizations that aim to obstruct HRW's efforts. These attackers often employ denial of service (DoS) or distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. While HRW had the ability to manually mitigate these attacks, the process was time-consuming and disruptive, requiring the immediate attention of HRW's two-person technical web team and preventing the organization's 70 content creators and publishers from performing their critical web-related tasks. Furthermore, the HRW website could not process online donations during an attack, as it consumed all server resources.
The Solution
In 2014, when HRW migrated hosting services to Pantheon, they decided to implement a solution for proactive DDoS detection and mitigation. They chose CDNetworks, a global content delivery network (CDN) with fully integrated Cloud Security DDoS protection and web application firewall. HRW had already been accelerating their website content and applications using CDNetworks for several years. As part of the new hosting infrastructure, HRW pointed all traffic to CDNetworks global acceleration servers, which include special DDoS 'absorption' Points of Presence (PoPs). These absorption PoPs, capable of handling millions of simultaneous requests, are incorporated into the CDNetworks cloud-based server network. The new hosting infrastructure was implemented quickly, with CDNetworks' expertise in accelerating Drupal websites proving particularly helpful.
Operational Impact
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