A DDoS attack on Norway’s government digital infrastructure has shown why organisations need dedicated protection against service disruption.
The attack began on 24 August and affected infrastructure used by Norway’s Digitalisation Agency, Digdir, and its operational provider, Vivicta. Services affected included public-sector logins, electronic identities, secure digital mail, government forms and data exchange systems.
Some services became unavailable for short periods. Others suffered slower response times and login problems. The attack ended on 26 August. There was no indication that systems had been breached or that personal data had been stolen. That is important because DDoS attacks do not need to break into a network to cause damage. Their purpose is to overload systems with traffic and make online services difficult or impossible to use.
For businesses and public-sector organisations, that creates an immediate problem. Websites can go offline, customers can be blocked from services and staff can lose access to important systems. Even a short disruption can affect operations, revenue and service delivery.
Corero Network Security sells technology designed to stop this type of attack. Its systems detect malicious traffic and automatically block it while allowing legitimate traffic to continue. The aim is simple: keep services online during a DDoS attack.
If an organisation has to wait for staff to identify an attack and react manually, disruption can already be under way. Automated protection is designed to respond immediately.
Corero can also operate as part of a hybrid defence model. In that setup, Corero’s technology provides local, real-time protection, while cloud-based traffic scrubbing can be used when an attack is large enough to threaten the capacity of an organisation’s internet connection.
That gives customers protection against both large attacks and smaller attacks that can still disrupt individual services or applications.
The Norway incident is a clear example of the problem Corero is addressing. Digital services are now central to how governments, companies and other organisations operate. If those services become unavailable, the impact can be immediate even when no data has been stolen. That makes service availability a core part of cybersecurity.
