Verisign launches DDoS tracking service

Web security firm VeriSign has added a new feature to its Internet Defense Network to track distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.

The company said that the new feature would allow webmasters to monitor their traffic and receive alerts when a denial of service attack may be about to occur. The new feature will be part of the Internet Defense Network offering, which monitors traffic and filters out possible attacks.

DDoS attacks disable web sites by flooding servers with large amounts of traffic. Faced with the bombardment of data requests, many sites are either forced to go offline or pay higher bandwidth costs.

The attacks have become a preferred method for conducting high-profile attacks, such as those which took down Twitter and Facebook last month and last year's attacks on government web sites in Georgia.

By allowing webmasters to monitor traffic for possible attacks, VeriSign hopes to help thwart possible DDoS incidents.

"Customers who attempt to overprovision their bandwidth are lulling themselves into a false sense of security against a real DDoS attack," suggested VeriSign CTO Ken Silva.

"Keeping bad traffic from reaching your doorstep requires a new cloud-based service such as VeriSign Internet Defense Network."