14 DAY TRIAL // The US Department of Homeland Security has awarded a $1.7 million (€1.55 million) contract to Galois, an R&D US company, which will be tasked to develop and help implement a new type of technology for mitigating DDoS attacks.
The $1.7 million contract was first announced last September and was officially awarded to Galois today, to help the company develop its "DDoS Defense for a Community of Peers" technology, 3DCoP for short.
This new technology, as described by the Galois team, helps SMBs (Small to Medium Businesses) mitigate and even stop DDoS attacks by working together to detect, track down, and prevent ongoing attacks.
"Underlying our implementation is a unique traffic flow monitoring capability, which observes traffic flows in and out of the enclave and finds patterns of interest," the Galois team explains.
3DCoP works by creating a virtual network between participating members, allowing them to stop traffic at different points, before reaching its target or before sluggish ISPs intervene to stop traffic in large network portions.
3DCoP, a cheaper, faster DDoS mitigation solution for SMBs
Using this technology, the DHS and Galois teams are looking for more efficient ways of preventing DDoS attacks, without the high costs that regular services provided by companies like Imperva or CloudFlare provide.
Companies will be relying on each other to stop traffic before reaching critical levels at the target's level. To work, 3DCoP needs to be deployed in a large number of companies, but the DHS will be responsible for that part.
We doubt that DHS representatives will have a hard time convincing companies to test a new, cheaper DDoS mitigation system/
On the technical side of things, the DHS contract will require Galois to develop a system that reduces mitigation response time by 50 percent, resulting in peak traffic reduction of between 75 and 90 percent. Additionally, 3DCop should be able to decrease the time between the start of the attack and the detection of the attack by 25 percent.
When finished, 3DCoP will become one of the centerpieces in the DHS' Cyber Security Division and its Distributed Denial of Service Defenses (DDoSD) program.
