spinsy-en-CA_hydra_article_spinsy-en-CA_19

spinsy-ca.com), these steps are non-negotiable and will be referenced during audits.
Next I’ll cover detection, testing, and a short meta-checklist for procurement.

## Detection & Testing: Make It Repeatable
– Baseline normal traffic and define adaptive thresholds (e.g., >3× baseline unique source IPs sustained for 2 min).
– Use simulated stress testing only in coordinated, legal test windows to avoid collateral damage.
– Capture pcap and netflow for at least 72 hours during an incident for post-mortem and law enforcement.
If you instrument detection and rehearse, you won’t be surprised when the next attack arrives.

To help with procurement, here are a few negotiation points to put into vendor SLAs: minimum mitigation capacity, guaranteed time-to-mitigate, BGP communities to use, and data retention policies for logs.

## Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them (compact)
– Mistake: Treating DDoS as purely “infrastructure” — Fix: include legal/PR/CS in tabletop drills.
– Mistake: Not testing failover — Fix: monthly dry-run failovers with validation of DNS and BGP states.
– Mistake: Turning on mitigation without understanding app behaviour — Fix: pre-approved mitigation rules and rollback keys.
– Mistake: Losing customers to confusing status updates — Fix: maintain a short, pre-approved status template and a real-time status page.
Avoiding these keeps operational chaos from turning a technical problem into a business crisis.

## Mini-FAQ
Q: How much does DDoS protection cost for a small business?
A: Expect baseline CDN/WAF costs from hundreds to low thousands USD monthly; on-demand scrubbing is pay-as-you-go and can be cheaper until you’re targeted repeatedly. Implementation and tests add one-off expenses but reduce outage costs dramatically.

Q: Can I handle DDoS solely with on-prem hardware?
A: Not at scale — on-prem hardware helps for small attacks and low latency needs, but large volumetric attacks require upstream capacity or scrubbing centers.

Q: How often should we rehearse our runbook?
A: Quarterly tabletop drills and at least one annual full failover test are recommended for medium/high-risk services.

Q: Who do I call first during an attack?
A: Your pre-set emergency contact at the ISP or CDN should be the first call, followed by your internal incident commander and legal/PR contacts.

Q: Are there regulatory implications for casinos and betting platforms?
A: Yes — uptime and consumer protection clauses are common in CA-regulated gaming frameworks, and you should document mitigation plans for audits.

## Sources
– Industry DDoS post-mortems and vendor best practices (internal and public reports).
– Experience from tabletop drills and live incident response carried out by engineering teams and network providers.

## About the Author
I’m a network security lead with hands-on incident response experience across regulated online services and gaming platforms, focused on practical resilience (not theory). My background spans ISP negotiation, BGP routing, and crisis communications for mid-sized operators.

This guide is for defensive purposes only. If you’re operating online gambling or related services, ensure you meet local regulations and include age/gambling responsible measures in your product flows (18+ guidance and player protection where required).