NETSCOUT relentlessly committed to Safeguard against Cyber Threats  

With a strong focus on mitigating cyber threats, NETSCOUT plays a crucial role in safeguarding against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks and other malicious activities. Beyond DDoS protection, NETSCOUT's portfolio also includes network monitoring and analysis tools. Their nGeniusONE platform delivers comprehensive visibility into network performance, enabling organizations to proactively identify and troubleshoot potential issues before they escalate into major problems. NETSCOUT's expertise in security and network monitoring has made them a trusted partner for businesses, service providers, and government agencies worldwide. Its solutions are designed to scale and adapt to the ever-changing threat landscape, making it a valuable asset in the ongoing battle against cyber threats. In a chat with VARINDIA, Vinay Sharma, Regional Director, India and SAARC, NETSCOUT shares insight on modern DDoS attacks, misconception about the attacks, measures to enhance cyber defensive capabilities etc. 

Building an Effective DDoS Defense Strategy 
With the cybersecurity threat landscape constantly evolving, it is important to have visibility into malicious threats. As per Vinay, a solution that is composed of highly curated, real-time global threat data presented in a way that allows one to understand how it impacts the organization is essential. 

Delving deep in this topic Vinay points out, “To effectively protect resources from modern DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks is through a tightly-integrated multi-layer deployment of purpose-built DDoS mitigation solutions. To prepare for and mitigate DDoS attacks, organizations should have a DDoS response plan with 6 key components included. These include Preparation which includes training, practicing, and rehearsing the plan, and Detection where it is crucial to have tools to detect and get alerts when an attack happens.  Once the attack is detected, it is important to classify it for getting the complete picture.  Tracing back the attack is the net phase before successfully mitigating the attack.  Then review the response and see what can be done better in the future and be better prepared.” 

Misconception about DDoS attacks  
Many organizations believe ISP and firewalls are good enough for DDoS protection.  This is a myth because ISP and firewalls are not sufficient for DDoS protection.  Vinay says that ISP can stop a large volumetric attack that is big enough to saturate the internet circuit.  But it will struggle to detect and stop smaller, short-lived, volumetric attacks, state exhaustion, and especially application layer attacks before the damage is done.  These types of attacks need an on-premise, stateless, DDoS attack protection solution.  
“Firewalls do offer rudimentary DDoS attack protection such as basic SYN, UDP, ICMP flood protection but impacts the performance of more important functions such as through put of layer-7 inspection, SSL decryption, and VPN termination.  A firewall cannot work in an asymmetric-routing scenario where only incoming DDoS attack packets are seen.  It will not provide the organization with detailed visibility into dropped DDoS attack traffic and will have no way to intelligently communicate with a cloud-based scrubber solution for the mitigation of large DDoS attacks” comments, Vinay. 

Measures to enhance cyber defensive capabilities 
Both security and availability at the enterprise scale are very important to ensure a world-class organization with secure performance.  

Vinay says, “The CIOs and CISOs should put in place relevant measures to make sure their organizations are unstoppable. They have to first establish a broad and deep network visibility covering legacy and hybrid cloud environments, and applications – all at the packet level.  Network packets hold the absolute truth of a potential breach or network problem and are the ultimate point of convergence between performance and security. 

Organizations should have the ability to conduct real-time, root-cause visibility and automated analysis across any network, any cloud, any data center, or any application, at any time.  This is because the network remains the only place where attackers cannot hide. 
They should possess the Network and security capabilities that scale with growth as your organization moves to 25-, 50-, 100-gigabit networking and beyond.”

Importance of cyber threat intelligence  
With Cybersecurity threats constantly evolving, it is difficult for organizations to stay ahead of the game. According to Vinay, “A reactive approach to cybersecurity is no longer enough to protect businesses from cyber-attacks. This is where cyber threat intelligence helps by providing organizations with up-to-date and actionable intelligence where they can take a proactive approach to cybersecurity, identifying and mitigating potential threats before they cause any harm. 

Cyber threat intelligence helps organizations stay ahead of potential threats.  By identifying and mitigating potential threats before they cause any harm, cyber threat intelligence can save organizations the financial costs of cleaning up after an incident.  It gives organizations an in-depth understanding of the threats that pose the greatest risk to their infrastructure, allowing them to take appropriate actions to protect their business.” 

To Conclude 
In his concluding words while prioritizing cybersecurity efforts, Vinay says, “At the outset, organizations have to identify the risks and confront the risks with a combination of technological tools and human resources. Employee training, Network Monitoring, and DDoS protection ensure the organization is safe.”