Yes, our Internet service providers are well equipped to handle many of the known threats. It is a practice that most tier-1 ISPs focus on tangible threats that can disrupt service as a potential risk. Say, for instance, natural disasters. Botnet herders and other cyber criminals also pose a major threat to the same.

Over the last couple of years, technology has improved manifold. This has helped watchdog organizations in keeping a track of cybercriminals and cyber activities. They have complete information on the people who are behind these increased attacks and also where the attack is sourced from. They are also aware of the destination where the attack is headed.

Every malicious activity such as DDoS and botnets have their route across the Internet. The communication between the bot variants is hard coded. Most of the Tier-1 Internet service providers have the requisite technology that allows them to listen in and sample the core of any malicious activity. This gives them a fair idea of where these things are headed and the ports and signatures that are associated with it. Thus, these service providers have complete knowledge about the malicious traffic transiting through their network as well as the ones that are originating or terminating within the said network.

The technology used by these Internet service providers is based on flow data. This not only makes it affordable but also ensures that it does not violate too many privacy laws. In reality, it’s just like looking at the outside of the box, without actually opening it! The technology only requires looking at the IP header information without any need of an analysis of the payload. This technology has been used internally by Tier-1 ISPs to check and stop denial-of-service attacks on their network.

The good news is that this technology is also offered as a paid service to the large connecting customers and hosting enterprise customers. Using this innovative technology, ISPs can mitigate many gigabytes per second of DDoS traffic that might be destined for their network. They are able to detect this traffic at the edge of their network. This traffic is then redirected to scrubbers and is cleaned by the time it actually reaches them!