Highlights
AT&T provided the school system with solutions that met the challenge they were facing:
- Prompt investigation of incident
- Highly expeditious incident response
- Extensive after-hours support at attack peak
- Detailed Incident Response Report within 24 hours of initial contact
- Ongoing DDoS protection to mitigate future attacks
- Addressed limited budget concerns
Cybersecurity solution
- AT&T DDoS Defense Emergency Mitigation
- AT&T DDoS Defense Service
Challenges
- School system did not have any DDoS protection and became the victim of a denial-of-service attack
- Hackers directed the volumetric attack at the internet gateway which caused the internet to become inaccessible
- The backup 4G wireless internet connection was not able to operate under the unusual traffic and was rendered useless
- The school depended on access to the internet for instruction, communications, and daily operations
Industry focus
- Public school
- state and local government
Downloads
Overview
A large city school system became the target of a volumetric distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, which overwhelmed its internet gateway and disabled its backup wireless internet connections. The school system did not have DDoS protection measures in place. This case study discusses how AT&T Cybersecurity assisted the school system mitigate the attack and protect against future denial-of-service attacks.
Introduction
A large city school system became the target of a volumetric distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, which overwhelmed its internet gateway and disabled its backup wireless internet connections. The school system did not have DDoS protection measures in place. The school depended on the internet for instruction, daily communications, scheduling, and operations. It needed to resume operations immediately and required a plan to protect against future DDoS attacks. The school system lacked adequate IT resources and turned to AT&T as their trusted internet solution provider for assistance. It also had limited budget but was able to work with AT&T to address these challenges. Key here was the availability of emergency mitigation services to mitigate the initial attack and restore internet availability. AT&T provided these services within one hour of contracting and proposed an annual subscription to the AT&T DDoS Defense service to monitor and mitigate any future attacks.
Conclusion
AT&T Cybersecurity played a vital role in mitigating the school systems’ denial-of- service attack due to our network relationship. The comprehensive solution provided by AT&T not only mitigated the school’s initial attack but provided a solution for future protection against DDoS attacks.