VeriSign looks to grow DDoS prevention service

VeriSign is looking to expand a service which helps web sites ward off distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

The company said that it will launch versions of its DDoS prevention system suited to smaller businesses.

Ben Petro, VeriSign senior vice president for network intelligence and availability, told V3.co.uk that, while larger firms often get hit by DDoS attacks that flood a site with large amounts of data, DDoS operations hitting smaller sites often use lower volumes of data.

Building on the enterprise platform with more automated systems and protecting against lower volumes of attack, Petro said that VeriSign has created an affordable service which can protect smaller sites and merchants while cutting costs from hundreds of thousands of dollars to a few thousand a month.

"We built a solution that was no longer $500,000," he said. "We finally have something that is available to the small and medium-sized business [SMBs] as well as the large enterprise."

VeriSign believes that interest in DDoS protection is growing, and said that its own survey of IT decision makers found that SMBs feel increasingly threatened.

The survey found that 63 per cent of respondents were hit by a DDoS attack last year, while 11 per cent had been targeted six or more times. Additionally, 71 per cent are planning to implement DDoS protection over the next 12 months.

Petro noted that, along with the increasing frequency of attacks, interest in DDoS protection has risen owing to the increased coverage being given to high-profile data breaches and DDoS attacks.

"What was shocking was how widespread DDoS has become," Petro said. "It was not what we expected to get back from a random survey."