Microsoft is looking to keep your SMB safe from DDoS attacks

Azure DDoS IP Protection, a new service aimed to help small and medium-sized businesses (SMB (opens in new tab)) better defend from distributed denial of service (DDoS (opens in new tab)) attacks, is now live in public preview, Microsoft confirmed. The new tool, a fully managed DDoS protection pay-per-IP offering, is not unlike DDoS Network Protection – a service mostly built do help large enterprises and firms with huge resources that need defending.

For starters, businesses can expect L3/L4 automatic attack detection and mitigation, various metrics to track, alerts to set, mitigation flow logs, and policies that can be tweaked. What’s more, the tool comes with integration abilities for Azure Firewall Manager, Microsoft Sentinel, and Microsoft Defender for Cloud.

Cost-effective DDoS protection

Where DDoS IP Protection differs from its big brother DDoS Network Protection is in support for DDoS rapid response, cost protection, and WAF discounts, which it lacks.

“With the DDoS IP Protection SKU, customers now have the flexibility to enable DDoS protection on individual public IP addresses,” Microsoft Senior Product Manager for Azure Networking, Amir Dahan, said in the announcement blog. “SMB customers who have a few public IP addresses to protect will benefit from this cost-effective DDoS protection option.”

DDoS IP Protection can protect businesses against the “largest and most sophisticated” attacks, Dahan further said, adding that SMBs can expect a minimal number of false negatives. With near real-time monitoring, and quick response times, users can track analytics and metrics, and log events better, helping them gain more visibility into the lifecycle, vectors, and best mitigation techniques, for various DDoS attacks. 

A distributed denial of service is still one of the most popular and effective cyberattack methods, in which cybercriminals use a vast network of compromised endpoints, known as a botnet, to flood websites and services with bogus requests. This flood renders the targets unusable.

DDoS IP Protection is now available in preview in select regions. It can only be enabled on Public IP Standard SKU. Billing starts February 1, 2023. 

Via: BleepingComputer (opens in new tab)