DDoS Protection: How Effective Are CDNs as a Defense?

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A CDN is seen by some as a good way to guard against DDoS attacks. But how do these work, and do they really provide full protection?

Cyberattacks that knock organizations offline can be a huge threat for any company today. More business than ever is done digitally, so any disruptions can quickly result in serious consequences in terms of both lost revenue and reputational damage.

This is especially important if online channels are your main - or only - way of keeping in touch with customers and driving sales. eCommerce retailers, communications service providers, financial services firms and software providers, to name but a few, all now rely on these channels to remain active.

When these services go offline, the costs can be significant. 40% of firms say a single hour of downtime will cost them between $1 million and $5 million - before any legal consequences are taken into account.

While there can be many causes of downtime, from power disruptions to hardware failure, one of the biggest threats to many businesses comes from a more malicious source - distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.