Content distribution network provider Akamai has launched Kona Site Defender, a service to protect enterprise customers from Distributed Denial of Service attacks.
The company already provides an anti-DDoS service, but the addition of Kona allows customers to purchase it as a distinct product from its wider web and IP acceleration and optimisation services, Akamai announced.
The company's existing security services include web application firewall, Domain Name Service protection, and SiteShield, designed to mitigate the effects of a DDoS attack by placing a barrier between a website's infrastructure and the public internet.
Kona appears to bundle several of these technologies, which promise to automatically protect websites against TCP SYN and UDP flood attacks -- the two most common attack types, according to figures by DDoS mitigation specialist, Arbor Networks -- as well as lesser known attacks, such as Slorloris, a "slow client" attack that floods a web server by keeping as many connections to it open by sending malformed HTTP headers.
Akamai's renewed efforts around DDoS protection come as new rivals enter the market, such as the popular start-up CloudFlare, another content distribution network provider that has won support for its ability mitigate the attacks.
An arm of Australian telco, Telstra International, also arrived on the DDoS protection scene late last year with its service.
The new services arrive at a time when the size and frequency of attacks are on the rise.
Prolexic, another company that provides DDoS protection, reported that the largest attack it managed last year saw attack traffic rise to a peak of 45Gbps, significantly overshadowing the average 1.45Gbps attacks.
Akamai also reported earlier this year that it has witnessed a 2000 per cent rise in the number of DDoS attacks in the past three years.
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