VeriSign launches DDoS tracking service

VeriSign hopes to help thwart DDoS incidents

Web security firm VeriSign has added a new feature to its Internet Defense Network designed to track distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

The company said that the new feature would allow webmasters to monitor traffic and receive alerts when a DoS attack may be about to occur. The feature is part of the firm's Internet Defense Network, which monitors traffic and filters possible attacks.

DDoS attacks disable web sites by flooding servers with large amounts of traffic. Faced with the bombardment of data requests, many sites go offline or pay higher bandwidth costs.

DDoS has become a preferred method for conducting high-profile attacks, such as those that took down Twitter and Facebook last month and crippled government web sites in Georgia last year.

"Customers who attempt to overprovision their bandwidth are lulling themselves into a false sense of security against a real DDoS attack," said Ken Silva, chief technology officer at VeriSign.

"Keeping bad traffic from reaching your doorstep requires a new cloud-based service such as VeriSign Internet Defense Network."