AT&T Launches DDoS Defense

BEDMINSTER, N.J. -- AT&T today announced it can help mitigate the devastating effects of denial of service (DoS) and distributed DoS (DDoS) attacks against enterprise networks by detecting and blocking malicious traffic, while allowing legitimate online transactions to continue. The company is integrating the new network-based AT&T DDoS Defense option with AT&T Internet Protect, a revolutionary predictive intrusion alerting service introduced in March. Using sophisticated tools to analyze traffic on its global Internet Protocol (IP) network, which handles 1.3 petabytes of data per day, AT&T Internet Protect identifies and proactively notifies customers of potential malicious threats, sometimes weeks in advance, before they become full-fledged cybersecurity attacks.

For example, in the case of the most recent Sasser worm, AT&T Internet Protect identified precursors to the worm several weeks before it was fully launched. AT&T immediately notified AT&T Internet Protect customers of the malicious activity and provided recommendations for remediation through a secure Web portal to help them proactively protect their networks. With the new DDoS Defense capability, AT&T Internet Protect will integrate real-time attack mitigation, stopping DoS and DDoS attack traffic floods within AT&T's network before they reach the customer. "We believe that by integrating the predictive and early warning capabilities of AT&T Internet Protect with DDoS Defense, we are delivering the most potent tools against these types of attacks, which have crippled entire networks and brought businesses to a halt," said Eric Shepcaro, vice president, AT&T application networking and emerging services.

AT&T Corp.