This TechTip™ blog is about Denial of Service attacks and why you need more than a Firewall to protect your network

Has your network ever been flooded with a rush of traffic for no good reason?

This could have been caused by a cybersecurity breach in the form of a attack to your network’s infrastructure. These attacks, commonly known as cyber-attacks, cause undesirable chaos to a network. Effects of malicious attacks could include potential hijacking of valuable confidential company data, redirection of network traffic to bad sites, planting destructive malware, massive network slowdown or even network destruction bringing it completely out-of-service.

Malicious cyber-attacks are continually testing network infrastructures. A cyber-attack orchestrated by computer hackers are known as a Denial of Service Attack (DoS) attack. DoS is when the hacker sends an unwelcome rush of traffic that seeks vulnerabilities in a targeted network infrastructure to exploit. Another common form of attack is the Distributed Denial of Service (DDos) attack. DDoS is when there are coordinated multiple location sources targeting a specific network for a simultaneous attack.

The attacking computers attempt to establish large numbers of network connections to send massive amounts traffic through. The attack may also include un-suspecting proxies used by the attackers. This kind of attack can prevent legitimate traffic from getting through to the intended systems that are under attack.

A good quality network security firewall when properly configured plays an important role to help prevent attacks. However, a network firewall may not be enough for DoS/DDoS attacks. Firewalls use established rules and protocols that are set to either ‘ON’ or ‘OFF’ for customized configurations. The problem with this is if the firewall settings are wrong it could block legitimate traffic to the network servers. To address this problem a higher level of protection is needed for DoS/DDoS attacks.

AVANU’s WebMux Network Traffic Manager protects networks from DoS/DDOS attacks at a higher level than the firewall. The WebMux Flood Control® feature protects and manages good versus bad traffic that goes to your network. It will limit and/or stop undesired or unwanted Internet Protocol (IP) network traffic, including protocols that rely on IP, such as Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), User Datagram Protocol (UDP), Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP), etc.

Flood Control also sets parameters that permit normal traffic but block traffic outside of the definition of normal. The settings are Packet Rate, Packet Threshold, and Timeout in Seconds. Those settings can be understood as the Average Packets per Second Limit, Instantaneous Packet Limit, and Amount of Time a Client IP Address Will Be Blocked in seconds.

In summary, AVANU’s WebMux Flood Control has the ability to detect attacks on the networks, trap bad IPs on the fly, and can also log the information of bad IPs for further review.

About AVANU®

AVANU designs and develops high quality enterprise products that are cost-effective for IT network infrastructures and data centers. Products are full-featured and reliably high in performance.

WebMux™ Network Traffic Manager is an integrated enterprise-class application delivery network (ADN) and global server load balancing (GSLB) solution with its built-in FireEdge™ for Apps Web Application Firewall (WAF).

WebMux manages, controls, and secures the most stringent network traffic demands reliably, assuring peak performance. The user-friendly menu-driven interface makes WebMux fast to deploy and easy to manage. It meets the U.S. Federal Information Processing Standard Publication (FIPS) 140-2 Levels 1 & 2 validated encryption computer security standard, Trade Agreements Act (TAA), and Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance.

For more information or a free Virtual WebMux software appliance evaluation copy, contact us by email at ‘info@avanu.com’. Telephone contact 1.888.248.4900 U.S. Toll Free Number or 1.408.248.8960 International.