DDoS protection offered

Last month's Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on four online gambling information portals, including a 1 gig/sec assault on Casinomeister.com, put the subject of robot armies and cyberinvasions of this nature back in the spotlight, but new solutions are evolving all the time.

Among the latest is a DDoS prevention tool developed by Computrad, an i-gaming infrastructure solution provider, and VeriSign, a provider of internet infrastructure services. The two companies have partnered to deliver a unique cloud based DDoS prevention service to e-gaming customers.

A spokesman for the partnership said that DDoS attacks have matured into sophisticated events that most existing solutions cannot detect or prevent, although VeriSign has experience in running its own successful DDoS prevention service.

Zaki Farooq, CEO of Computrad, commented: "Concern about attacks has risen sharply. The World Cup alone will drive an unprecedented amount of volume for sports books so there is a heightened level of motivation for business managers to prepare for DDoS attacks in the run up to important events."

VeriSign Internet Defense Network (VIDN) is a network and hardware agnostic DDoS monitoring, mitigation and attribution service that detects and filters malicious traffic away from enterprise websites, helping maintain critical online applications and services.

Leveraging VeriSign's expertise in building and protecting large-scale infrastructures, VIDN uses a proprietary filtering technology to stop a DDoS attack in the cloud before it reaches a customer's network. In addition, the service requires no hardware installation, making it more cost effective than premise-based solutions.

Phil D'Angio, director of business development at VeriSign, said: "The problem with DDoS isn't just a technical one; the business needs to understand its exposure to risk, put a defence in place and work with a partner that can deliver value-based commercial terms."