From a business perspective risk mitigation from cyber threats now rank at the top of IT departments’ responsibilities. And, while there are lots of really ugly ways the bad guys have come up with for disrupting operations, unfortunately denial-of-service attacks (DoS) and distributed denial-of-service attack DdoS from the earliest days of the Internet have been a menace, and because of their effectiveness in creating chaos have remained at or near the very top of “Public Enemy” lists. These are nasty indeed. 

As a result, having real-time access to information about DoS and Ddos threats is critical, and growing more so as the virulence and frequency of such threats is increasing. That is why the announcement from Prolexic, a leading provider of DDoS protection services, of its PLXpatrol is something you should not only investigate but sign up for. The reason is that PLXpartol is a complimentary public service that the global security community can leverage to gain an instant global view of current DoS and DDoS threats and activity.  It is now available at www.prolexic.com/plxpatrol. No registration is required.

How DoS and Ddos create havoc

For the uninitiated, DoD and Ddos are caused when someone with malicious intent attempts to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users.  The sophistication of such attacks is varied and grown over time but the objectives have not—temporarily or indefinitely deny the services of a host connected to the Internet.

Typical attacks involve the saturation of a host server with external requests in order to overload it. This will cause the target server to slow down to the point of being virtually unavailable, causing a time-consuming and costly re-set, or a complete crash. In the real-time world of e-commerce, this can be much more than an annoyance, it can be lethal, and the same should be added when it comes to attacks of government websites. And, while we have all seen the headlines when popular heavily trafficked sites like banks and credit card companies get hit, the facts are that there are no entities that are immune from being targeted and attacked.

Why PLXpatrol is being offered the community

The context for the Prolexic offering PLXpatrol to the community arises from its expertise and desire to help make the cyber world safer for everyone. As the company states, Prolexic’s solutions “currently mitigate more attacks than any other DDoS protection provider.”   They also like to point out that because their clientele includes high-risk online gaming and financial services companies, Prolexic has a tendency to see threats early, which makes it a logical resource for unbiased DDoS threat intelligence. 

Here is what Stuart Scholly, president of Prolexic, had to say in making the service available, “PLXpatrol is an invaluable service for the world’s cyber security community…Staying up-to-date and informed about threats is the best defense against DDoS attacks and PLXpatrol now makes that incredibly easy.”

What you see is what you need

PLXpatrol is starting life offering three distinct data views:

Attack Tracker – Continuously updated, this view shows where DDoS attacks directed against Prolexic’s clients are originating from and geographic locations of targets (anonymized).  Attack Tracker also displays the number of source and destination IP addresses involved in the attack.

 Country Ranking (Last 24 hours) – This ranking shows the countries that have originated the most attack traffic against Prolexic clients over the last 24 hours.

Country Ranking (All Time) – This ranking shows the countries that have originated the most attack traffic against Prolexic clients since data collection began in 2009.

A screen shot highlights the value.

Source: Prolecix

“Prolexic already publishes a widely respected Quarterly Global DDoS Attack Report, and while that format and deep analysis still has value, there’s nothing like having instant access to data that is updated frequently,” said Scholly.  “Over the coming months we plan to roll out many more data views to make PLXpatrol the industry’s number one destination for DDoS insight and intelligence.”

This is a case where forewarned will enable you to be well armed. Plus, the price is irresistible. It could be just wishful but maybe the availability of this information will cause the perpetrators of DoD and DdoS attacks to turn their attentions elsewhere.