NETSCOUT > Case Studies > Large Independent School District Fights Off DDoS Attack on First Day of School

Large Independent School District Fights Off DDoS Attack on First Day of School

Customer Company Size

Large Corporate

Region

America

Country

United States

Product

Arbor Edge Defense® (AED)
Managed AED

Tech Stack

DDoS Protection
Firewall

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Productivity Improvements
Digital Expertise

Technology Category

Cybersecurity & Privacy - Network Security

Applicable Industries

Education

Applicable Functions

Business Operation

Use Cases

Cybersecurity

Services

System Integration
Testing & Certification

About The Customer

One of the largest Independent School Districts (ISD) in Texas serves a number of cities, towns and portions of unincorporated Harris County. For the 2018–2019 school year, the district enrolled over 40,000 students. The district had not seen any large attacks or a high volume of attacks over a period of two years, so they felt that the DDoS protection provided by their internal infrastructure, namely their firewalls, was sufficient to meet their needs. Their needs changed once the pandemic hit and they were forced to move to a virtual environment for everything their students and teachers required access to on the network.

The Challenge

The Independent School District (ISD) in Texas had not experienced any significant attacks or a high volume of attacks over a period of two years, so they believed that the DDoS protection provided by their internal infrastructure, namely their firewalls, was sufficient to meet their needs. However, their needs changed once the pandemic hit and they were forced to move to a virtual environment for everything their students and teachers required access to on the network. During testing and prior to the school year they did not feel any effects from DDoS activity, so they assumed their firewalls were taking care of it. Once the school year began and the network was overwhelmed with legitimate users in the form of teachers, students and parents attempting to gain access to virtual meetings, virtual classrooms and email, the cracks began to show and many of the districts’ stakeholders could not access the network. This was determined to be the combination of the illegitimate traffic along with legitimate traffic overpowering the system.

The Solution

The ISD’s trusted partner reached out to the NETSCOUT Arbor team for help. In the initial analysis, they were not sure which product should be recommended but after a discussion with the network operators they decided on the AED 2600. The ISD requested for a proof of concept (POC) or try and buy prior to purchasing. During the POC period, they realized that they did not have the required bandwidth within current staff to manage and maintain the AED so they could get the most out of it by fine tuning the appliance to take advantage of NETSCOUT Arbors world class Threat Intelligence from the ATLAS® and ASERT teams. By the end of the POC, they decided that they would also engage NETSCOUT’s managed services team to manage and maintain their AED implementation. AED is the on-premise, always-on, perimeter defense that will identify and mitigate all DDoS traffic coming into their network. AED will also identify and block any IoCs that are attempting to communicate with the outside world, eliminating potential data breaches from malware or ransomware.

Operational Impact

The ISD has not experienced any downtime due to DDoS since the fine tuning of the AED appliance.
The ISD was able to alleviate downtime that was due to DDoS activity.

Quantitative Benefit