Azure DDoS Protection: A Comprehensive Guide

Azure DDoS Protection is a cloud-based service that helps prevent and mitigate Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

It's designed to detect and filter traffic in real-time, ensuring your Azure resources remain available and secure.

DDoS attacks can be particularly devastating, as they aim to overwhelm your system with traffic, making it difficult or impossible to access your resources.

Azure DDoS Protection can help mitigate these attacks, allowing you to focus on your business without worrying about security threats.

A DDoS attack is a type of cyberattack that overloads a network or system with traffic from multiple sources.

These attacks can be particularly damaging because they can be launched from anywhere in the world, making it difficult to pinpoint the source.

DDoS attacks can be launched using various methods, including botnets, which are networks of infected devices that can be controlled remotely.

A single botnet can consist of thousands of devices, each sending traffic to the targeted system.

DDoS attacks can be particularly effective against cloud-based systems, such as Azure, because they can be launched from anywhere in the world.

Azure's global infrastructure makes it an attractive target for DDoS attacks.

DDoS attacks can be launched using various types of traffic, including HTTP, DNS, and SYN floods.

A SYN flood attack involves sending a large number of SYN packets to a targeted system, overwhelming its ability to respond.

DDoS attacks can be prevented or mitigated using various techniques, including traffic filtering and rate limiting.

Azure provides various DDoS protection tools, including Azure DDoS Protection, which can help prevent or mitigate DDoS attacks.

Azure DDoS Protection monitors your application traffic patterns 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, looking for indicators of DDoS attacks.

It offers adaptive real-time tuning, where intelligent traffic profiling learns your application's traffic over time and selects the most suitable profile for your service.

DDoS Protection analytics, metrics, and alerting provide detailed insights into DDoS attacks, including auto-tuned mitigation policies and machine learning-based network traffic profiling.

Azure DDoS Protection is natively integrated into Azure and includes configuration through the Azure portal, making it easy to set up and manage.

Here are some key features of Azure DDoS Protection:

IP protection is a pay-per-protected IP model that contains the same core engineering features as DDoS Network Protection. It differs in value-added services such as DDoS rapid response support, cost protection, and discounts on WAF.

You can enable DDoS IP Protection using Azure PowerShell, and for more information about the tiers, see DDoS Protection tier comparison.

A metric for an IP address under a DDoS attack changes to 1 as DDoS Protection performs mitigation on the attack traffic. This metric is called Under DDoS attack or not.

We recommend configuring an alert on this metric so you'll be notified when there’s an active DDoS mitigation performed on your public IP address.

Azure DDoS Protection offers robust defense against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, safeguarding your cloud resources and ensuring service availability.

DDoS Protection is always-on, monitoring your application traffic patterns 24/7 to detect indicators of DDoS attacks. It instantly and automatically mitigates the attack once it's detected.

Azure DDoS Protection uses adaptive real-time tuning, learning your application's traffic over time and selecting the most suitable profile for your service.

DDoS Protection applies three auto-tuned mitigation policies (TCP SYN, TCP, and UDP) for each public IP of the protected resource, with policy thresholds auto-configured via machine learning-based network traffic profiling.

During an active attack, you have access to the DDoS Rapid Response (DRR) team for attack investigation and post-attack analysis.

Azure DDoS Protection is natively integrated into Azure, making it easy to configure through the Azure portal. It understands your resources and resource configuration.

With turnkey protection, simplified configuration immediately protects all resources on a virtual network as soon as DDoS Network Protection is enabled, and all public IP resources when DDoS IP Protection is enabled.

Here are the key features of Azure DDoS Protection:

DDoS Protection Standard monitors actual traffic utilization and compares it against the thresholds defined in the DDoS Policy. When the traffic threshold is exceeded, DDoS mitigation is initiated automatically.

DDoS Protection Standard drops attack traffic and forwards the remaining traffic to its intended destination. Within a few minutes of attack detection, you are notified using Azure Monitor metrics.

Azure DDoS Protection offers a robust defense against DDoS attacks, safeguarding your cloud resources and ensuring service availability.

If you have a DDoS Protection Standard, make sure it's enabled on the virtual network of internet-facing endpoints.

Configuring DDoS alerts helps you constantly watch for any potential attacks on your infrastructure by monitoring your applications independently.

Understanding the normal behavior of an application is crucial to prepare to act if it's not behaving as expected during a DDoS attack.

Microsoft Azure offers two DDoS Protection SKUs.

Azure DDoS Protection is designed to handle massive traffic spikes during an attack, automatically scaling its resources to accommodate the increased load and ensure your resources remain accessible.

DDoS Protection Standard applies three autotuned mitigation policies (TCP SYN, TCP, and UDP) for each public IP of the protected resource in the virtual network that has DDoS enabled.

You can view the policy thresholds by selecting the metric Inbound packets to trigger DDoS mitigation, which are autoconfigured via machine learning-based network traffic profiling.

DDoS mitigation occurs for an IP address under attack only when the policy threshold is exceeded.

Azure DDoS Protection continuously monitors your network traffic patterns for anomalies that might indicate a DDoS attack, ensuring swift detection and response before legitimate users experience disruption.

Adaptive Real-time Tuning intelligently analyzes your traffic patterns over time and automatically tailors its mitigation strategies to fit your specific needs, ensuring optimal protection without unnecessary disruptions to legitimate traffic flow.

Attack Alerting can send configurable alerts via various channels, including email, SMS, and Azure Monitor, enabling you to take timely action when an attack is detected.

DDoS Protection telemetry, monitoring, and alerting expose rich telemetry via Azure Monitor, allowing you to configure alerts for any of the Azure Monitor metrics that DDoS Protection uses.

You can integrate logging with Splunk (Azure Event Hubs), Azure Monitor logs, and Azure Storage for advanced analysis via the Azure Monitor Diagnostics interface.

DDoS Protection Standard can mitigate the following types of attacks: network floods, protocol attacks, and web application attacks, including HTTP protocol violations, SQL injection, and cross-site scripting.

You can track key performance indicators (KPIs) related to DDoS attacks, including attack traffic volume, duration, and effectiveness of mitigation strategies, using Attack Metrics.

The metric for an IP address under a DDoS attack changes to 1 as DDoS Protection performs mitigation on the attack traffic, and you can configure an alert on this metric to be notified when there's an active DDoS mitigation performed on your public IP address.

Azure DDoS Protection offers a cost-guarantee program in some regions, ensuring you won't incur unexpected charges exceeding a predefined threshold during a DDoS attack.

The cost of Azure DDoS Protection varies depending on the plan you choose. Basic DDoS Protection provides protection at no additional charge.

DDoS protection plans have a fixed monthly charge of $2,944, which covers up to 100 public IP addresses. Protection for additional resources will cost an additional $30 per resource per month.

You can use a single DDoS protection plan across multiple subscriptions under a tenant, so there's no need to create more than one plan.

Planning is crucial to mitigate potential risks and ensure business continuity.

First, ensure your DDoS Protection Standard is enabled on the virtual network of internet-facing endpoints. This is a critical step to prevent attacks from overwhelming your infrastructure.

Monitoring your applications independently is key to understanding their normal behavior and identifying any anomalies. This allows you to prepare for potential DDoS attacks and take swift action if necessary.

Configuring DDoS alerts helps you stay vigilant and respond promptly to any potential threats.

Cost can be a major concern when it comes to DDoS attacks. You won't be charged for attack traffic.

In some regions, a cost-guarantee program is available for Azure DDoS Protection, ensuring you won't incur unexpected charges exceeding a predefined threshold during a DDoS attack.

Basic DDoS Protection provides protection at no additional charge. However, if you need more comprehensive protection, you'll need to consider the costs.

DDoS protection plans have a fixed monthly charge of $2,944 per month, which covers up to 100 public IP addresses. Protection for additional resources will cost an additional $30 per resource per month.

It's worth noting that a single DDoS protection plan can be used across multiple subscriptions, so there's no need to create more than one plan.

To help protect against the costs of DDoS-related usage spikes, consider using DDoS Protection. You'll receive service credit for resource costs incurred from a documented DDoS attack.

Here's a breakdown of the costs associated with DDoS protection plans: