More and more industries and organizations are finding that they need protection from DDoS attacks. If your website is being threatened by denial of service, there is a good chance that you need help stopping them.
There is no shortage of providers. In fact, the cyber security industry is growing leaps and bounds. At first glance, this may seem like a good thing, but the reality is that there are a lot of providers entering the market without the knowledge or infrastructure to confidently protect your business. This makes navigating your options and finding a reliable solution that much more difficult.
We’ve compiled a list of questions that will help you find the best DDoS protection service for your needs. If you need help with a DDOS attack and are looking for protection, these are the questions you need to be asking.
How long have you been providing DDOS protection?
At Rivalhost, we have been successfully mitigating DDoS attacks for just over 10 years. That means we have over a decade of experience. We were handling DDoS attacks before they were a mainstream headline, and we’ve continued to protect customers even as attacks have gotten more complex.
You want to choose a DDoS protection provider that has a track record of success, and that you know has an established reputation in the industry. Your website is an integral part of your business. You want protection from a company that not only you know will mitigate DDoS attacks quickly and efficiently, but a company that can provide adequate protection without exorbitant cost.
How long does it take for you to mitigate an attack?
You want to know when you can expect your website to be back online. Rivalhost DDoS protection can be activated within 15 minutes, even much sooner if you are already using our service. We proactively monitor for malicious traffic, and once recognized, begin filtering DDOS traffic away from your website. We do this while allowing your human visitors to pass through unaffected.
Each provider will have their own timeline for mitigating attacks. It may take up to a few days with others, but most professional firms can have you set up quickly. You want to choose a mitigation provider that is responsive. Every minute you are offline, your customers cannot find you.
What does your SLA agreement cover?
An SLA is a service level agreement. This is an important document that you not only want to make sure you fully understand. It stipulates the level of protection that you can expect to receive and outlines all of the questions you would have regarding types of attacks you are protected against, mitigation time, guarantees, and so forth.
One important thing to consider here is what type of protection are you getting? There are essentially two levels: 1) protection from DDoS attacks up to a certain level; 2) guaranteed uptime and protection from attacks.
There is a huge cost difference between the two. The first level of protection will protect you up to a guaranteed level of attack. Most providers will have tiers of protection that go up in increments (i.e. 2Gbps, 4Gbps, 4Gbps, 8Gbps). With this type of plan you will be protected from attacks as long as they do not pass your max protection level. If an attack sends you over, your IP will be null-routed (taken offline) in order to prevent the attack from spilling over onto the network.
While this level of protection is not adequate for every business, if the attacks you experience are normally small in scale, this is a much more economical choice. You will always be able to upgrade your plan should things change.
The second level of protection is usually reserved for banking and financial sectors — enterprise level protection. What this means is you are guaranteed (through a contract) that your site will remain online no matter what. This level of protection is more expensive, as the resources that go into this type of DDoS protection are substantially higher.
Have you ever had a problem with false positives?
Due to the complex nature of modern day DDoS attacks, you want to make sure that the system or procedures your provider uses to mitigate attacks will not prevent regular people from visiting your site. You want the bad traffic filtered out, but you still want people able to access your website.
Application layer 7 DDOS attacks mimic human behavior — that’s what makes them so difficult to mitigate effectively. Make sure the provider you use has systems in place to make sure that legitimate site visitors aren’t being blocked.
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