What is our primary use case?
Our company is an ISP. We provide DDoS protection services ourselves. We need the technical means to be able to provide such services. We have DefensePro in our facilities through which we provide protection services to our clients.
How has it helped my organization?
Radware Defense Pro is an excellent solution for our customers as it works in blind mode. That, and the licensing model, is more attractive for the customer since the license is based on the capacity of clean traffic, not the combined traffic. If an attack is around 30 gigabits, you can still go on with your license of four gigabits due to the clean and legitimate traffic not exceeding four gigabits.
What is most valuable?
It's very good at protecting users from DDoS attacks. It's the leader in this domain.
In our use case, we do not use encryption or decryption. We simply defend against general types of DDoS attacks, like TCP SIM or DNS flood attacks. With Radware, we can defend against many types of attacks.
Radware consists of a so-called security profile. Each profile is just like an engine, and the engines check if that packet is valid or invalid. If it's invalid, it just gets dropped immediately and doesn't go for checking to another engine. But if it's okay, then another engine checks if it belongs to a scanning attack or it's a behavior-based attack. It helps decide whether something is malicious or not.
DefensePro is very effective at detecting attacks in real-time. From our experience, it's quite effective equipment. The main goal during the attack is just to protect the host and the customer's facility. So in this way, it is quite effective. We also have NetScout in our facilities, so we can compare them with each other.
Our goal is to analyze the attack after attack and try to improve our ability to minimize the false positives. It's helped us.
We've been able to reduce downtime associated with attacks. During an attack, Radware DefensePro drops the malicious traffic. Sometimes it is very effective, and sometimes it is not as effective. However, without this, the very first attack against the customer would just pull everything down. Now that we have this equipment in place providing protection, the customer can continue to work. Maybe the performance would suffer a little bit; however, at least they can continue to work. We have small attacks happening every day against our customers, so having protection is critical.
What needs improvement?
The APSolute Vision feature needs improvement.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used the solution for around five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We do have problems with stability when it comes to APSolute Vision. It seems to have been written using Docker and it's quite complicated. We don't know much about the internal infrastructure. Sometimes, it just doesn't let you log in or it displays configuration errors. I'd rate the stability eight out of ten overall.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have around 30 end users. However, we do have the solution for our end customers, which are enterprises.
We haven't had a chance to test the scalability. That said, by design, scalability is built into the design of the solution. You can install multiple DefensePros and they can be controlled and monitored from one single APSolute Vision station. They have switched to a newer platform, and I don't have experience with that controller just yet. My impression is they fixed a lot of issues people found with APSolute Vision when building the new controller.
How are customer service and support?
Technical support is among the best. If you open a ticket, they respond immediately and they are very helpful. They ask to give control so the support engineer can fix things himself. It's great.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I'm also familiar with Arbor. It's another leader in the domain.
We used Jupiter for some time. Radware receives regular updates of threats, however, Jupiter did not have that capability. It worked mainly with behavior-based attacks. Both Radware and Arbor also have behavior-based attack protections and zero-day attacks, plus they both have subscription services and centers of knowledge that periodically send you updates on the latest attacks and on malicious hosts.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was complex. You hear documentation is quite good, however, it's really just a field of knowledge. It's just not enough to understand how to configure things or how to click and choose another profile.
You need to know the nature of DDoS attacks and many, many intricate things about DDoS attacks to be able to configure the box comprehensively. This is the biggest challenge. It's unlike, for example, if you have to deal with routing equipment. Everything looks straightforward, and everything is predictable. This domain, it's much more complex due to the nature of the sync of the DDoS attack. Even for us, now, five years later, we still don't know everything. The field is very complex.
There is continuous maintenance needed from our side. We have four people who handle maintenance tasks.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The product is very expensive, as is Arbor.
What other advice do I have?
We still have the older model of DefensePro without X. Instead of the cyber controller, we have their older monitoring solution, APSolute Vision. My understanding is that the cyber controller took away some of the deficiencies of APSolute Vision.
I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. It has some issues, however, Radware alongside Arbor are two of the best solutions.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Amazing