Hosting providers are common targets for damaging DDoS attacks due to the number of tenant customers they service, which greatly increases their chances of being impacted. An attack on a single client of the provider—such as a high-traffic gaming service—can create major collateral damage to other hosted customers. These innocent bystanders are placed in the unfortunate situation of suffering from second-hand damage because they are hosted on the same shared facilities as the intended victim, and the results can be devastating for both the provider and their customers. Because hosting providers are the conduit of Internet connectivity for so many businesses, they have an obligation to adequately protect their infrastructure and the business continuity of their customers. Hosting providers face keen competition for new customers and are typically bound to various SLAs and uptime requirements, which are significantly impacted by DDoS attacks.
Every hosting provider is measured on its ability to meet these SLAs, and network connectivity is a key consideration for maintaining always-on Internet availability. Organizations don’t want their valuable services running on an unprotected cloud; before they consider migrating to hosted services, they want to ensure that their provider has adequate security and DDoS protection measures in place. By differentiating services through the effectiveness of their DDoS security infrastructure, hosting providers have the opportunity to more easily retain existing customers and win new ones.
When websites and services go offline because of a DDoS attack on the hosting provider’s servers, customers aren’t usually very sympathetic; they’re likely to quickly switch providers. Hosting providers can help keep their customers happy by defending their infrastructure and servers against these damaging DDoS attacks. A happy customer is a loyal customer, which equals recurring and growing revenue. As more organizations migrate critical applications and services to hosted environments, the premium placed on network security is increasing. Hosting providers that can document and demonstrate the value of their DDoS protection capabilities are in a great position to offer tiered services with premium pricing based on the level of advanced DDoS mitigation each tenant customer requires.
With Corero’s SmartWall® delivering DDoS protection, providers can offer cleaner transport streams, enhanced security SLAs, as well as greater visibility and reporting with Corero’s SecureWatch® Analytics and multi-tenant service portal.
For over a decade, Corero has been providing state-of-the-art, highly-effective, real-time automatic DDoS protection solutions for enterprise, hosting and service provider customers around the world. Our SmartWall® DDoS mitigation solutions protect on-premise, cloud, virtual and hybrid environments. For more on Corero’s flexible deployment models, click here. If you’d like to learn more, please contact us.