DDoS Protection: 7 Solid Reasons Why You Should Never Rely On Your ISPs For It

Are you still relying on your internet service provider to safeguard you from DDoS attacks? Sadly, most businesses are in the same boat. Depending solely on your internet service provider for DDoS protection is like hiring a mobile app developer to create a website for your business. Even if they somehow manage to do it, the quality of the output won’t even come close to what an experienced web developer can give you.

As cyberattacks become more and more sophisticated and attackers find new ways to target businesses, you need specialized protection to secure your business from cybersecurity threats. However, an internet service provider can’t tick all the boxes. No wonder we see businesses still depending on ISPs DDoS protection paying a hefty price for it.

7 Reasons Why You Should Not Rely On ISPs For DDoS Protection

Wondering why you should stop relying on DDoS protection offered by your internet service provider? Here are seven reasons why.

1.   ISPs Don’t Specialize in DDoS Mitigation

Let’s assume you are still depending on your ISP to save you from a DDoS attack. A massive DDoS attack targets your business and when you call your ISP, they fail to respond promptly. Even if they have a viable DDoS protection plan in place, it can do as much as protect you from a complete blackout. You will still notice latency issues. The reason is that your internet service provider might use all the resources to fight off the DDoS attacks so there will be less resources available for serving customers which would have a negative impact on your network speed and bandwidth. This means that even your legitimate users will bear the brunt of the slowdown and this would ruin their user experience.

2.   ISPs Falls Short of Cloud Native Solutions

Many internet service providers offer a clean pipe solution which is capable of preventing volume based DDoS attacks from negatively impacting your network. Ironically, the effectiveness of this system depends heavily on the location of the on premise server. This adds more restrictions to the equation. Since, your internet service provider doesn’t usually have a content delivery network, they can never provide the same level of DDoS protection as a cloud native solution with a content delivery network can do. Another advantage of a content delivery network is that it can provide the best user experience irrespective of user location.

3.   Poor Understanding of User Applications

Some internet service providers might lack the capability to develop user profiles for app and web based applications. Other internet service providers can not tell the difference between HTTP, HTTPS and app data transfers. If you don’t have a web application firewall, your legitimate users might suffer during DDoS mitigation because there is no way to let the legitimate traffic pass and block malicious traffic.

What’s even worse is that some organizations have compliance requirements which stop them from implementing DDoS protection strategies. That is where a customizable cloud based web application firewall solution can come in handy.

4.   DDoS Attacks Comes In All Shapes and Sizes

There are many different types, approaches and motivation behind DDoS attacks. Without understanding every type, approaches hackers are using and assessing the size of the DDoS attack, you can never defend against a specific type of DDoS attack. That is exactly what leads to the downfall of ISPs when protecting your business from DDoS attacks. Their solutions are designed to block a particular type of DDoS attack. As a result, you can not expect it to protect your business from a DDoS attack type which it is not made to defend against. What’s even worse is that these ISPs can not defend themselves from every type of DDoS attack so how can you expect them to protect your business.

5.   On Premises DDoS Mitigation Solutions are Not Enough

Most DDoS mitigation solutions offered by internet service providers look at the signs of DDoS activity in your traffic. This approach might work when the DDoS attack is small or medium in volume. Sadly, these on premises DDoS mitigation solutions fail miserably when they come under a large volume or complex DDoS attacks. Additionally, ISPs also find it difficult to distribute the attack across multiple points to reduce the impact. Due to this, a large volume attack can easily overwhelm the DDoS protection offered by your internet service provider.

6.   ISPs Don’t Have Rate Limiting Capability

Another major issue with internet service providers is that they lack rate limiting capabilities. This means that if an attacker sends millions of incorrect page requests, it can bring your server down to its knees. What’s even more interesting is the fact that these requests don’t have malicious payload or intent behind them so you can not expect a web application firewall to act either.

This means that you are at the mercy of the cybercrimminals if you are relying on DDoS mitigation services offered by your internet service provider.  Even though some internet service providers offer IP based rate limiting, which sets a limit for traffic. Once that limit is exceeded, all legitimate and malicious traffic is blocked.

7.   ISPs Lack DNS Protection

A vast majority of internet service providers don’t give you DNS protection. This means that your DNS server can become a soft target for cybercrimminals to hit. Once your DNS server goes down, all the services associated with it also go down. What’s even worse is that attackers can also implement attack amplification techniques to multiply the impact of the attack manifold. Since, your internet provider can not replace your name servers, this puts your DNS server at a higher risk.

Would you still rely on your internet service provider to protect your business from DDoS attacks or hire a dedicated DDoS protection service? Share it with us in the comments section below.