A10 Networks is expanding its network security portfolio in a bid to help combat the rising sophistication of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.

The new A10 Defend suite of offerings includes a range of advanced security capabilities to provide organizations with layered protection against complex multivector DDoS attacks. The solutions utilize advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and automation to quickly detect and mitigate threats. A key component of the portfolio is the A10 Defend Detector, which provides early warning alerts to enable proactive threat mitigation.

In addition to offering early warnings, the A10 Defend portfolio includes orchestration and mitigation capabilities to provide comprehensive protection. The A10 Defend Orchestrator enables automated coordinated responses across an organization's DDoS defenses. Another element, the A10 Defend Mitigator, provides high-performance scrubbing to counter large volumetric attacks.

A10 Networks claims that its new A10 Defend suite is an evolution of its current capabilities and can scale defenses automatically to match the sophistication of modern DDoS attacks.

"A10 Defend is an evolution of existing technology, and includes our DDoS protection technology, which we have had in the market for 10 years," Elisa Caredio, head of security solutions at A10, told SDxCentral. "A10 Defend Detector is newly available now and we have plans to continue to build out the solution portfolio over time with new capabilities and solutions for new operating environments."

The A10 Defend portfolio consists of multiple products that contribute to protecting networks against attacks.

Caredio noted that the A10 Defend Detector, A10 Defend Mitigator and A10 Defend Orchestrator work in concert to detect and mitigate attacks using machine learning learning (ML) and AI to provide protection against advanced forms of attack. She explained that the combined offering can help organizations to granularly identify the malicious patterns of traffic to accurately mitigate the attack without compromising legitimate traffic.

"A10 Defend Detector has new and improved detector capabilities that allow customers to more granularly identify victims based on variations against a dynamically established baseline," she explained. "It can then make recommendations about whether incoming traffic is anomalous and therefore, a potential attack."

An increasingly common trend for DDoS attacks is the use of multiple vectors to overwhelm a potential victim. Caredio said, for example, user datagram protocol (UDP) attacks can target domain name systems (DNS), Memcached and Network Time Protocol (NTP), and can be launched at the same time, creating multivector attacks. She added that A10 Defend can detect multivector attacks and stop them using the product’s built-in ML/AI techniques.

"AI helps with creating patterns of traffic samples to help determine anomalous changes from a baseline, as well as tuning mitigation techniques based on these traffic samples," Caredio said.

Alongside DDoS defenses, A10 is enhancing web application security for its customers. Earlier this year, the company launched the A10 Next-Gen Web Application Firewall (WAF), powered by Fastly. The WAF helps defend against ongoing threats of web application attacks and data breaches.

"The A10 Next-Gen Firewall augments A10's Thunder application delivery controller security capabilities specifically for web applications," Caredio said. "While Next-Gen WAF is part of our overall security solution set, A10 Defend solutions are specifically designed for DDoS protection and mitigation."

Looking forward, the plan is to expand the A10 Defend portfolio with a proactive DDoS threat intelligence service that creates another layer in helping organizations protect against new and previously unknown attacks.

"The threat intelligence service builds on A10's expertise in DDoS mitigation and will provide advanced DDoS intelligence for depth, accuracy and proactivity," Caredio said."It is expected to be available early next year and A10 will continue to expand the solution portfolio over time."