Content Delivery Network: The Overlooked Protector Against Cyber Attacks

Today, it is hard to imagine life without the Internet. It has completely altered the way in which we interact with one another and gain access to information. But as Internet use has increased, so have the risks to Internet safety. Cyber attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and they can cause significant disruptions to service availability and worse, financial loss to companies. On average, IT downtime costs companies USD $5,600 every minute, as reported by Gartner.

DDoS or Distributed Denial of Service attacks are one instance of this type of danger. This form of cyber attacks involves the coordinated deployment of a large number of compromised computers, or “botnets” to overwhelm a targeted website or online service with so much traffic that it becomes inaccessible to its intended audience.

It is crucial for any company with an online presence to be able to fulfil user requests and provide content quickly, reliably, and securely. This is where a CDN (Content Delivery Network) comes in handy.

Essentially, a CDN is a network of servers (called “edge nodes”) placed in high-traffic areas all over the world. By routing requests for websites and other online services to edge nodes that are geographically closest to users, the website or service will run faster and more smoothly as CDNs eliminate the need for data to travel over long distances.

However, in addition to enhancing page load times, website speed, and content delivery performance, one often overlooked major benefit that CDNs bring to the table is that they can also aid in enhancing security.

CDNs Thwarting Threats

In a nutshell, CDNs can become an invaluable method to significantly dampen even the most severe of DDoS attacks and other forms of cyber threats. This is because they are highly effective at protecting a website or service by filtering out malicious traffic before it reaches the target.

For instance, distributing the load across numerous servers is one of the significant defense mechanisms employed by CDNs to prevent any DDoS attacks. This method reduces the risk of a botnet overloading a single server, which could result in the downtime of a website or service. As an added security measure, CDNs can identify and prevent attacks from known malicious IP addresses, while methods like rate limiting, traffic shaping, and blackholing can be used to put a stop to DDoS traffic at its source.

In addition to DDoS protection, a reliable CDN service may also offer other security features, such as Web Application Firewall (WAF), bot mitigation, Challenge Collapsar (CC) attack defense (defending against HTTP DDoS attacks) and API security to solve content distribution security and acceleration performance problems.

Content security measures, such as password authentication, access control, minimum authorisation, session management, input validation, and encryption, safeguard the origin server as well as its users.

Such advanced capabilities also enable CDNs to secure content from tampering or theft. This means that businesses have the option of allowing only generic data to be accessed or cached across all the CDN nodes, while implementing more stringent access controls for sensitive data. For example, users may be required to retrieve certain sensitive content via the origin server and its firewall or filtering policies.

Advanced in the Content Delivery Network space, Huawei Cloud CDN takes it a step further by deeply integrating CDN with Edge Security (EdgeSec) to provide secure acceleration with intelligent defense against live-network attacks. EdgeSec leverages big data, behaviour analysis, human-machine identification, and threat detection to enable security capabilities like precise access control, CC attack defense, and DDoS mitigation.

Responding Towards Threats

DDoS and other forms of cyber attacks remain a serious problem for Internet users. However, websites and online services can mitigate the effects of such threats and guarantee user access to critical materials by deploying Content Delivery Networks from the world’s advanced CDN distributor, Huawei Cloud.

Watch this space as this year, Huawei Cloud CDN will be introducing new features that will surely be able to change the landscape of what CDN security is, for years to come. These latest features include:

1. Configuring IP addresses with port numbers for referrer validation
   • You can configure referrer validation in a more refined and flexible manner.

2. Specifying URL authentication scope
   • You can choose whether to require authentication for requests to access files with particular extension names.
     • The authentication scope can be quantified and verified.
     • Our origin server resources are more secure.
3. Changing the service type (flexibility)
   • You can use an alternative bottom-layer acceleration platform to change the service type to meet business needs.
   • With just one click, you can switch the service type. Previously, you had to delete the domain name, add it to CDN once more, and choose a new service type if you wanted to use it for your new company.
   • You can cut down on communication expenses and time.
4. Configuring advanced content retrieval
   • You can take advantage of improved configuration efficiency, deviation optimisation, and revised origin server configuration.
5. Video seek
   • You will be able to:
     • Conserve bandwidth and lower the frequency of origin pull.
     • Adapt to user needs for customised video playback.
     • Deliver the most recent resources to all users at all times.
     • Relieve the burden on origin servers.

Huawei Cloud CDN not only accelerates but also safeguards the delivery of content for global users. Huawei Cloud CDN is able to better manage delivery quality to geographically diversified consumers while protecting against malicious attacks thanks to the deployment of 2,800+ PoPs inside a wide variety of networks across more than 130 countries and regions.

Choosing the best-equipped CDN from a trustworthy provider such as Huawei Cloud can provide a solution to minimise and prevent the damage caused by cyber attacks.

To learn more about how Huawei Cloud CDN can protect your business from modern cyber threats, click the link down below.