5 Steps to Evaluate DDoS Mitigation Services [PLUS 4 Top Providers]

If there’s ever been a time for DDoS mitigation services, it’s now. Here’s why.

DDoS attacks are rising fast and show no signs of slowing down. The United States suffered the most DDoS attacks; 44% of all reported attacks in Q1 2022 occurred in the U.S. It’s a sobering statistic forcing many companies to evaluate their protection against DDoS attacks, and if you’re reading this, you’re probably in the same boat.

When your network resources come under a DDoS attack, they can be knocked offline, impacting your bottom line and reputation.

This blog post provides an overview of the critical steps to take when evaluating DDoS mitigation services and reviews the top providers in the market. By taking these steps, you can find the best solution to protect your business from DDoS attacks.

DDoS Mitigation Services: Evaluate the 4 Top Providers

The primary purpose of a DDoS attack is to stop real users from being able to reach your network. Using multiple distributed devices, attackers flood your servers with traffic, rendering them unreachable.

If potential customers and customers alike can’t reach your website, you’ll suffer financial losses and damage to your reputation.

With attacks on the rise, you need to rely on a mitigation service that protects your servers around the clock, offers 24/7 support, and instills confidence they are doing everything that can be done to protect against DDoS attacks.

With a powerful DDoS mitigation strategy and a provider that cares, you’ll enjoy benefits like:

• A secure network.
• An automated, quick response.
• No interference with regular traffic and good data.
• No staff or training is needed.
• Affordable compared to a successful attack.

Understand the Basics Of DDoS Protection

There are four main parts to a DDoS protection strategy.

1. Detect - Although it’s hard to detect an attack as they become more sophisticated, with always-on protection, you can detect and distinguish between an attack or a high volume of regular traffic.
2. Respond - You need to respond to an incoming identified threat and mitigate the attempt to disrupt service. How you do so and through which avenues determine how much damage an attack inflicts.
3. Route - Using AI and machine learning, a mitigation service routes traffic, breaking it down into manageable chunks and sending it to a centralized data scrubbing center.
4. Adapt - It’s no use protecting against attacks if you don’t learn from them and adapt to attack patterns. Analyze traffic patterns regularly for repeat offenders, high traffic volume from single IP addresses, and misused protocols.

There are three standard DDoS mitigation methods: Clean Pipe, CDN Attack Dilution, and Anti-DDoS Proxy. Each has pros and cons, but the most popular method is Clean Pipe.

The Clean Pipe method passes all incoming traffic through a scrubbing (or cleaning) center. Here, malicious traffic is identified and separated from legitimate traffic before it reaches the server.

What Should you Look for In A DDoS Mitigation Service?

Not all mitigation solutions or providers are cut from the same cloth. Before you compare providers, here’s what to look for.

1. Is it Cost-effective?

Firstly, is it affordable? You’re paying for a service that protects you against malicious attacks that might cripple your business or at least cause a few hours of immense stress. You can’t put a price on that. But, any service provider worth their salt will work hard to give you the best service at an affordable price.

You’ll need to discuss hardware and software requirements, the amount of capital investment you’ll need, and whether your chosen solution is customizable. Can you create custom configurations and policies? Factor that into the cost.

Also, consider the type of agreement you make. A pay-as-you-go pricing model might seem attractive, but if an attack happens, you’ll incur massive costs for the cloud resources used to mitigate it.

2. Does it Grow With You?

Scalability is essential. Can your mitigation service adapt to the needs of a growing business? How can it respond effectively to the ever-increasing size of DDoS attacks?

Network capacity is crucial. On-premises DDoS mitigation appliances are usually capped and can’t handle attacks of a specific size. Cloud-based solutions are scalable and can defend against high-volume attacks.

3. Is it reliable?

Latency (or delay) is the time it takes for data to get to its destination across a network. You want a mitigation service that offers low latency and uses always-on protection. With always-on protection, response time to attacks is almost instant, time-to-mitigation is instant, and all incoming traffic is routed through scrubbing centers.

Other questions to ask:

• Does your mitigation service have high uptime rates?
• Is there around-the-clock support managed by skilled technicians and analysts?
• Is automatic protection provided without the need for manual intervention?

Reliability is crucial.

4. Does it Offer Visibility?

Does your DDoS service provide actionable insights to optimize incident response? Do they provide reporting, visibility, and post-attack analysis? Do they provide historical reporting of sources and destinations of attacks?

Access to data is vital when using a mitigation solution. You should know what’s happening on your servers and network. Automated notifications keep you in the loop and alert you immediately to any suspicious activity.

5. Does it Have a Good Reputation?

Any company can talk the talk. But can they provide everything they say they do? And more importantly, do they provide excellent customer service?

Look for customer reviews. Is your provider known for caring about its customers and offering easy-to-reach support? Are its product packages simple and flexible? Is your provider known for reliability, support quality, and a great customer experience?

Sure, you’ve got to ask a lot of questions. But mitigating against DDoS attacks is a potentially business-saving decision. Ask all the questions you can!

Compare the Top Providers of DDoS Mitigation Services 

1. Cloudflare

Cloudflare is a popular name in the DDoS space. Based in the U.S., it boasts 180 data centers around the world. It provides advanced DDoS protection using a global content delivery network (CDN) with built-in security measures and lightning-fast speeds.

They offer a free version that lets you test Cloudflare’s essential features, but advanced security features are only available on paid plans. Stats and analytics are limited. You have to integrate Google Analytics to get more detailed reports.

With a worldwide presence, Cloudflare is best for enterprises and businesses with locations outside the United States.

2. Imperva

Commonly compared to Cloudflare, Imperva is another juggernaut in the DDoS space. Imperva DDoS provides DDoS mitigation, a global load balancer, a web application firewall, and a CDN, all designed to improve the performance of your website.

With automatic protection and a sizeable on-demand scrubbing capacity, Imperva detects and mitigates attacks targeting websites and web applications quickly and effectively. With attack traffic blocked at the edge, you don’t need to scale up bandwidth. 

Imperva offers a free trial and is best for large enterprises and government websites.

3. DataDome

DataDome looks at every request to your mobile app, website, and API and compares it against an in-memory pattern database. With AI and machine learning, DDoS attack detection software quickly decides whether the request comes from a human or a bot.

Its Level 7 DDoS prevention solution is delivered as a service, avoiding the need for DNS rerouting or architecture changes.

DataDome offers a free trial and is best for eCommerce businesses. Monthly and annual rates are on the expensive side.

4. Atlantech Online

If your business is located in Washington, D.C. or Northern Virginia, Atlantech Online is ideally placed to provide DDoS protection.

atlantech|ddos protect employs a multi-layered approach to DDoS defense to ensure that a subscriber organization is safeguarded from complex, stealthy DDoS attacks and the vast attacks that can quickly saturate Internet connectivity.

While Atlantech Online has been offering cutting-edge communications tools for over two decades, we realize that organizations that pivot to meet customer needs will always win.

We offer automatic protection within milliseconds of an attack. Our solution is affordable and customizable; we provide the service, so no staff is required. With automated alerts, you’ll get notifications when our DDoS protection service is in motion.

Atlantech Online is best for enterprises in the Washington D.C. metro area and Northern Virginia.

Choose The Best DDoS Mitigation Service Provider For Your Needs

We understand the importance of DDoS mitigation, and that’s why we keep your user experience front-of-mind with our service. From robust reporting to 24-hour support, we’re a top provider if you’re looking for service quality over network size.

We’re happy to meet ever-growing business demands with always-on, real-time, pay-as-you-grow DDoS protection. We can get your protection online and operational if you’re already connected to the Atlantech Online network.

Get a customized quote if you’re ready to protect your company immediately. We’ll cover your needs and current challenges and outline a solution. We’ll then prepare your quote based on your needs and build a solution.

Alternatively, check out our free webinar. Learn all there is to know about DDoS attacks, the current business practices for mitigating DDoS attacks, and how atlantech|ddos protect reduces the risk of falling victim to a DDoS attack.