Today’s fast-paced digital landscape demands an optimized user experience that is always available to engage end users. However, businesses are constantly under threat from a variety of attacks that seek to disrupt that experience, including DDoS attacks. And the risk is growing. According to the 2024 Imperva DDoS Threat Landscape Report, DDoS attacks increased 111% in the first half of 2024.
At the same time, IT and network teams are often stretched thin and can’t always respond to threats the way they would like. Overwhelmed teams typically configure thresholds for DDoS attacks manually, a task that can be both time-consuming and difficult to keep up with regularly. This leaves businesses vulnerable to two critical risks:
- Setting thresholds too low, which blocks legitimate traffic and frustrates users with unnecessary challenges
- Setting thresholds too high, allowing damaging DDoS attacks to compromise website performance and user experience
To protect the online user experience without adding new tasks to already overburdened IT and network teams, Imperva has introduced Adaptive Threshold for Layer 7 DDoS attacks. The new solution uses machine learning and historical traffic patterns to dynamically adjust thresholds and detect attacks in real-time, providing a more flexible, precise, and scalable way to defend against increasingly sophisticated DDoS threats while minimizing friction for end users.
This dynamic approach not only safeguards user experience but also enhances operational efficiency, allowing businesses to maintain seamless online services while reducing manual intervention. With the ability to minimize disruptions to legitimate traffic and automate the entire mitigation process, Imperva Adaptive Threshold represents the future of DDoS protection, offering businesses peace of mind and ensuring continuous, uninterrupted online services.
Adaptive Tuning Using Machine Learning
Unlike static thresholds, which require manual setup and adjustment, Imperva Adaptive Threshold continuously monitors and analyzes traffic patterns using the Dynamic DDoS Threshold (DDT) algorithm that calculates optimal thresholds daily for each website based on 30 days of traffic data. This eliminates the guesswork of manual configuration and ensures that thresholds are set accurately for each site’s unique traffic behavior.
As traffic patterns evolve, the adaptive system adjusts accordingly, providing a much more flexible and precise detection mechanism. This adaptability allows organizations to mitigate the risk of false positives that could disrupt legitimate traffic as well as false negatives that would miss real DDoS attacks.
Scalable Protection for Shifting Traffic Patterns
Imperva Adaptive Threshold is designed to scale automatically with traffic, ensuring protection even during unexpected spikes in demand. Whether traffic gradually increases over time or surges during special events or campaigns, Imperva Adaptive Threshold adapts accordingly without manual intervention. Since the system is based on continuous learning and traffic analysis, it improves over time, making it more accurate and effective as it encounters new traffic patterns and attack vectors.
Imperva Adaptive Threshold is ideal for businesses with unstable traffic patterns, such as SaaS providers, financial institutions, or e-commerce platforms. These businesses often experience unpredictable traffic volumes, making it harder for IT and network teams to adjust thresholds based on normal traffic behaviors. For businesses that experience seasonal fluctuations or rapid changes in traffic (e.g., during flash sales or marketing events), the system allows for exception rules to be set, ensuring that legitimate traffic spikes are not mistaken for DDoS attacks.
Increased Operational Efficiency
For overburdened IT teams, automating the threshold-setting process for DDoS attacks based on changing traffic patterns reduces the need for constant monitoring and adjustments. Fewer manual interventions to tune DDoS thresholds allow IT teams to focus on more critical tasks.
Improved User Experience
One of the standout benefits of Imperva Adaptive Threshold is the improved user experience it provides. Traditional DDoS defense mechanisms often trigger excessive security challenges (e.g., CAPTCHA or JavaScript verification) when thresholds are set too low, leading to user frustration and disruption.
With Imperva’s adaptive system, the threshold is adjusted dynamically based on historic traffic behavior, which significantly reduces the likelihood of legitimate users being subjected to unnecessary security measures. By ensuring that thresholds are neither too high nor too low, the system strikes the right balance between security and user experience.
Integration with Existing DDoS Protection Layers
Imperva Layer 7 DDoS protection works at the application layer and complements network layer (Layer 3 and 4) DDoS protections to mitigate both volumetric and application-layer attacks. The mitigation challenges Imperva DDoS protection uses – such as CAPTCHAs, JavaScript validation, and behavioral analysis – are designed to effectively counteract the automated nature of Layer 7 DDoS attacks, which typically involve botnets generating overwhelming HTTP/S requests to disrupt service.
Learn more about Imperva DDoS Protection.
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