According to research by the Ponemon Institute, the average cost of a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack last year was $4.7 million. Moreover, greater than fifty percent of all targets have also suffered a cybersecurity breach while undergoing a DDoS attack. Studies elsewhere bear out these alarming statistics, and no industry sector, whether financial services, technology, healthcare, software, or media and entertainment, is immune from these cyber assaults.
One such study is the new Solution Showcase titled, “Cybersecurity at the Edge of the Internet,” developed by IT research and analyst firm, Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG). The report describes the need for Cloud Service Providers (CSPs), Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to have redundant deployments at the network edge, which in effect provides a bulwark to mitigate growing security threats.
EdgeConneX®, ESG’s report notes, has experienced great success in executing effective security strategies with top content, cloud and Internet security companies by facilitating the most secure and lowest latency delivery of their data across their distributed platform of Edge Data Centers® (EDCs).
“Given its capabilities, EdgeConneX continues to gain traction with service providers and CDNs globally,” noted Jack Poller, ESG analyst and author of the Solution Showcase. “Architects seeking the ability to leverage redundancy for enhanced cybersecurity would be well served to assess how EdgeConneX can help. In addition, companies deploying at the network Edge need to ensure that they have requisite power capacity, system density, and connectivity to store and distribute content to local ISPs throughout a metro area.”
Redundancy is a critical component to ensure the availability of mission-critical services, alleviating the risk of cyberattacks for CDNs and service providers at the Edge. How great is that risk? “Globally, almost three-quarters (73%) of organizations suffered a DDoS attack,” the ESG report notes, “and 85% of attacked organizations reported multiple assaults.”
Daniel Shugrue, Director of Security Product Marketing at Akamai, also commented on the findings.
“Both DDoS Mitigation and Application Security are best served from the Edge of the Internet, closest to where attackers are located,” said Mr. Shugrue. “Leveraging a strong partnership with EdgeConneX, Akamai is deployed ‘one hop’ away from the end users in 16 metro areas. The Edge Data Centers provide the redundancy and proximity needed for superior threat protection.”
ESG also noted several other factors that are raising the level of vulnerability across the IT landscape. Among these, the volume of attacks, the complexity of application protection and the need for cybersecurity professionals that far outstrips the supply of such specialists. ESG holds that the fundamental way to mitigate security risks is to deploy data within standard environments across multiple geographies and process potential threats closer to the end user.
“At EdgeConneX, it is part of our mission to provide customers with advanced protection against DDoS and other cyberattacks,” stated Clint Heiden, chief commercial officer, EdgeConneX. “The results found within this recent study further validate our ability to help customers achieve a high level of security utilizing deployments within our facilities at the Edge of the network.”
EdgeConneX has created a new Edge of the Internet by designing and deploying facilities that are strategically positioned nearest to network provider aggregation points, ensuring the lowest latency data delivery with improved security and quality of service.
To learn more about EdgeConneX, click here.
