In recent years, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks have become increasingly common, and unfortunately, in 2023, this trend shows no sign of slowing down. These types of attacks can be devastating for education institutions, causing significant disruptions to teaching and learning, as well as making your services more vulnerable to hacking.

So, what exactly is a DDoS attack? In simple terms, it involves overwhelming a targeted website or network with a flood of traffic from multiple sources, causing it to crash or become unresponsive. These attacks are carried out by hackers or groups seeking to disrupt services, or extort organisations. They are sometimes initiated by students, particuarly during exam time.

The growing threat of DDoS attacks

The AARNet Operations Centre constantly monitors network traffic and observed close to a 300% increase in the number of DDoS incidents for the first three months of 2023 compared to the same period in 2022. Some of this traffic may be attributed to the KillNet Anonymous Sudan campaign reported in March, which targeted Australian universities among other entities. Industry reports show similar increases of up to 300% between January and March 2023.

The education sector is a prime target for DDoS attacks, as schools and universities rely heavily on online platforms and resources for the delivery of education and administrative functions. The consequences of a successful DDoS attack can be severe, resulting in significant downtime, loss of productivity, and reputational damage.

How DDoS Protection services can help mitigate against threats

One of the best ways to protect against DDoS attacks is to invest in a specialised DDoS protection service, such as the service AARNet offers all institutions connected to our network.

The AARNet DDoS Protection service provides high-performance and cost-effective protection against volumetric DDoS attacks entering our network. Volumetric attacks aim to overwhelm a website or service with a high volume of traffic, with botnets or amplification techniques often used to increase traffic volume.

The AARNet DDoS Protection service takes advantage of our network border routers located at both international endpoints and endpoints within Australia to quickly shutdown threats. It uses advanced algorithms to identify and filter out malicious traffic before it impacts customer networks.

The service can be easily activated on your existing AARNet network connection without a disruption to your services or the need to re-route any traffic through scrubbing centres.

DDoS attacks are a growing threat in 2023. Protecting against DDoS attacks is an essential part of keeping your systems up and running and maintaining the trust of your students, staff and communities.