What is our primary use case?
We are a telecom service provider. We provide services to our enterprise customers in India and compliment these services with security layer as a part of our security services.
Being a part of the solution design team, I have been interacting with customers and creating solutions for them to fulfill their requirements. One of the products that we have in our offerings portfolio is around security, which is complimenting our connectivity portfolio. We provide this from Arbor platform, which we have deployed in our network. We have taken the hybrid model from Arbor, and there was a physical installation done in two of the gateways of the country. If the mitigation capacity goes beyond the subscribed boxes, then the Arbor Cloud subscription usage hits and mitigation would be done accordingly.
We have deployed Arbor platform and for our customers, we offer it as a managed service from our network. There are also customers looking for on-premise deployment.
We are using Arbor's hybrid approach for our overall product build. We have on-premise deployment, however, beyond that we have taken the Arbor Cloud subscription, which is really useful because you secure yourself for anything beyond your current mitigation capacity. This is a really good feature of Arbor that is available.
How has it helped my organization?
We use Arbor platform to provide DDoS services for our customers. We provide a clean pipeline solution to our customers. We have seen a tremendous response from many customer segments, particularly during the certain period, which is the time period when our customers expect a lot of traffic volumes coming through to their servers. This is where these DDoS services are being requested by the customer. Predominantly, it is DDoS that we offer to our customers, and mostly customers also want protection from the volumetric attacks, but there are certainly cases where application layer attacks are also looked at being mitigated by customers. In more than 75 percent of the cases, it is a volumetric attack protection that customers are looking for.
We have a vast connectivity portfolio and the Arbor solution complements that. In addition to that, it is also helping us to understand where challenges are coming from, so we can do the mitigation in our own network. We can plan our investments accordingly and help to make the network more secure and robust for ourselves as well as our customers.
Recently we have faced unprecedented times when people overnight started to operate from their homes. At that time, many applications for most enterprise customers were exposed to the open Internet by allowing remote working, from homes or anywhere, and the users were given access to the applications over the open Internet. That posed a serious threat to attacks. At the same time, that provided a lot of opportunities for security companies. When we look at the way in which applications are being consumed by end users, security becomes very paramount, because it's not only making the application available to end users, but it is also making it available in a more secure manner.
The moment that we open up these applications to open Internet, we increase the attack surface for the infrastructure/application, and that is where security becomes very critical. We have seen high adoption of security as a service for our customers, because no one wants to invest on day one in the security infrastructure equipment. This is for obvious reasons:
- No budgets being accounted for this
- Even if budgets are accounted, it becomes practically impossible to deploy such solutions in such short time frame
What we have seen is there has been a huge demand from our customers in providing these security services as managed services where the service can be enabled within a short time span. Going forward, I will still see these demands from the market, from across all customers be it large or small, and we plan to provide these services as a managed service on pay-as-you-go model.
What is most valuable?
We are living in a world that is changing at a very fast pace. We have to match the pace of the world, not only from network security per se, but also from the point of view of the security at a larger level. We are not just protecting the safety of the customer, but protecting the application as such. That is where the real threat comes from, and the challenge is being thrown to all the providers and OEMs to keep our feature set updated and adding to features for minimal costs.
What needs improvement?
There is always room for improvement for any product or service. If we can bring in more agility when deploying services, that is definitely a scope which we can work towards. Nowadays, everything is being offered as a service model. It is not that we have to deploy the physical hardware, many things move up to the cloud, or even can be delivered as a VNF in the customer's environment as well. So, in that space, if we can add more features to make it more seamless for customers to use and make it available through some marketplace, not only at the hyperscalers, but also for any on-prem deployment, that definitely would be a big plus.
If we could decouple the hardware and software, making it more easily available for the customers with the exact robustness of the functionality, then that would be beneficial. At the same time, it would bring in cost efficiencies, which eventually is the end goal of most CXOs within an organization.
Buyer's Guide
Arbor DDoS
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Arbor DDoS. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
For how long have I used the solution?
The relationship with Arbor is quite old, however, from current organization per se it is around 5 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The entire deployment of the hardware that we have done so far is quite stable and robust. As of now, the dependency is more on the hardware itself, which comes along with the Arbor solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I am convinced with the kind of scalability Arbor brings in. The Cloud subscription, which is available as one of its features, makes the scalability limitless. This is something which makes Arbor stand out from the others, not only from the perspective of scalability, but also from the overall user experience perspective as well. It is critical to still manage within the limits of the customer and do all the mitigation that is required for them.
What was our ROI?
In the world that we are living, there are challenges everywhere at every step. We are able to run our businesses without a glitch and offer DDOS services to our customer within the SLA
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We have evaluated Arbor against other OEMs. It is not only about the feature comparison, it is also based on what kind of skill sets are available in any enterprise and what are they more comfortable with. We are living in a world that is very heterogeneous, and we like to keep it heterogeneous in order to maintain some level of redundancy of the OEM level. This is where from a security perspective Arbor DDoS has the advantage. Customers tend to pick vendors who have a multi-level approach that can protect them from any potential attacks.
As a product/platform, Arbor is quite focused and offers quite smooth features vis-à-vis its competition. The acceptance that we see for Arbor, from the customer's perspective, is very high. Many customers prefer to go with Arbor solutions rather than any other solution when it comes to DDoS. Abor solution offers service feature, reliability, and a brand that can be trusted. From our perspective, we value it quite highly as far as its standards of security when providing DDoS services.
What other advice do I have?
It is not just about the features alone, it is about how smoothly you will be able to deploy the solution, e.g., the availability of the product and how the OEM is maintaining the relationship with its customer. There are multiple factors that need to be considered. "This is not just a one-time sale. It's about how easily the systems are available, and how well your partner is able to support you and provide lifecycle management."
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.