DDOS Provider In New Alliance

Published: Friday, April 08, 2005 Online-Casinos.com

DDOS PROVIDER IN NEW ALLIANCE

Prolexic teams up with Telecity in European partnership

The highly experienced and effective US anti-Distributed Denial of Service provider Prolexic, has extended its commercial reach into the European market by joining in a deal with TeleCity, a provider of managed data centre services.

TeleCity will be Prolexic's European host location, providing a secure environment for its IT infrastructure. Prolexic reports that its infrastructure is already live in TeleCity, with several leading online gambling, including Sporting Index, and foreign exchange organisations using the service.

The collaboration enables the company to address the UK's escalating DDoS problems. The UK has traditionally been targeted by organised crime syndicates due to the size of its online gambling sector and its proximity to Eastern Europe, a region where many of the attacks originate. DDoS attacks are co-ordinated by cyber criminals, who place malicious viruses onto computers of unsuspecting broadband users. When the attack is triggered, these infected or "zombie" computers, become controlled by the criminals and simultaneously 'flood' a network with fake packets, preventing legitimate traffic from accessing a system.

The results of an attack include web site downtime, the inability to take and process orders, damaged customer loyalty and, in the worst-case scenario, bankruptcy.

According to a recent study by Aberdeen Group, an internet-based attack can cost a business on average $2 million in revenue per incident.

Barrett Lyon, CTO of Prolexic and an individual famous for his undercover work in busting recent Russian criminal networks said: "Cyber terrorists are now utilising up to 75,000 zombie computers in one attack, which means that DDoS attacks can exceed 1 gigabyte in bandwidth. This is a problem for routers and firewalls, as they are unable to respond to a dynamic attack which may grow in size and complexity. Therefore, as attacks become more sophisticated, the limitations of traditional security measures are exposed, especially as we are seeing attacks that target multiple network layers simultaneously and more effectively mask their source."

Hugo Smith, IT director at Sporting Index Limited, said: "The issue of DDoS has been well documented and we were no exception to the rule - like many organisations we were receiving threats and being attacked. Unfortunately, our ISP was unable to provide us with the level of protection our business required. This led us to Prolexic, who were able to install a robust solution in a matter of hours. Since then, Prolexic technology has successfully repelled a number of attacks, so that our business can continue as normal."

TeleCity has decided to introduce the service following demands from customers for greater protection against increasing malicious activity on the internet. TeleCity's Managed Security Service already provides customers' networks protection against unauthorised access, viruses and worms, but new and sophisticated threats such as DDoS pose serious implications for businesses if not tackled effectively. Prolexic directs customer traffic through its data centres and then using its own patented technology cleans it up and re-routes it back to the client. It provides intrusion protection and network monitoring to both enterprises and Service Providers:

Andy Horn, managing director TeleCity UK, commented: "After the successful take up of our managed security service, our customers now see TeleCity as a key part of their network security strategy and expect us to continually provide solutions which address the online threats to their businesses."

Lyon concluded: "There are already over ten customers being protected by the Prolexic infrastructure at TeleCity. We felt the time was right to establish a formal presence in Europe as the region is undoubtedly suffering from a higher level of extortion compared to other parts of the world."

DDoS gained notoriety as a vehicle for cyber criminals in 2001 when eBay, Microsoft and Amazon were attacked, resulting in $1 billion in damages and lost business. Thereafter, denial of service attacks have grown in frequency, size and sophistication, and are now estimated by the University of California to number 4,000 per week worldwide. Advancements in P2P networking, greater bandwidth availability and the convergence of wireless and webTV are only fuelling the frequency of DDoS attacks.

According to the FBI, Denial of Service has now become the most costly form of cyber crime businesses face today.