SAN ANTONIO, Aug 25, 2003 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Rackspace Managed Hosting, the leading managed hosting provider, today announced PrevenTier(TM), a three-tiered security system to help identify and mitigate the effects of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. Rackspace is the first hosting provider to offer a combination of its own proprietary technologies and commercially available solutions from Arbor Networks and Riverhead Networks to quickly and accurately locate suspect traffic at the advent of an attack and sanitize it without disrupting the free flow of legitimate network traffic, while dramatically shortening detection and resolution times.

"Enterprises have a right to expect that service providers protect them from DDoS attacks when they contract for high-network availability," said Eric Ogren, senior analyst at the Yankee Group. "Rackspace is the first Tier 1 service provider to utilize best-of-breed solutions from Arbor and Riverhead to deliver comprehensive DDoS protection that not only detects and removes malicious traffic, but also allows legitimate traffic to pass -- an essential component to preserving business continuity for customers of their hosting service."

PrevenTier begins by monitoring all traffic entering Rackspace's network through a proprietary, patent-pending intrusion detection technology. Capable of handling over 30 million packets per second, PrevenTier examines each incoming packet for signs of malicious activity, utilizing statistics to perform granular traffic analysis of source and destination IP addresses, protocol information, flow information and traffic volume.

PrevenTier's second layer of protection uses Arbor Network's Peakflow DDoS solution to search for anomalies on a network-wide basis. Peakflow analyzes the customer's traffic patterns to learn about normal network behavior and creates a dynamic profile of the server's usual traffic. PrevenTier then monitors the traffic to the server, searching for traffic that deviates from this baseline. In the event of a DDoS attack, Peakflow flags the anomaly within seconds, provides detailed reporting on the attack, and identifies the appropriate corrective action.

Finally, if malicious activity is detected, PrevenTier then reroutes suspect traffic through the mitigation engine, the Riverhead Guard, where individual traffic flows are subjected to a Multi-Verification Process that includes anti-spoofing, anomaly detection and dynamic filtering to accurately identify and block malicious packets. Legitimate traffic is forwarded to the destination server, which, unaffected by the ongoing DDoS attack, continues serving clients.

Rampid Web Designs, based in Stratham, New Hampshire, develops highly trafficked online dating and entertainment Web sites. Given the high visibility of their sites, they are often a target for DDoS attacks.

"We chose to leave our former service provider because they could not help us withstand multiple DDoS attacks, causing significant downtime for our sites," said Peter Simard, partner, Rampid Web Designs. "Then we moved to Rackspace and began beta testing PrevenTier. The results were remarkable! Rackspace was alerted to each attack and within minutes successfully blocked and removed the malicious traffic. Rackspace was able to react so quickly that we did not even realize we had been attacked."

"During the past 12 months, while beta testing the product, Rackspace has had over 95 percent success in blocking DDoS attacks while allowing legitimate traffic to reach the protected server," said Paul Froutan, vice president of engineering, Rackspace Managed Hosting. "PrevenTier is a critical component to our comprehensive security offering, enabling Rackspace to deliver maximum uptime to our customers' business critical applications."

PrevenTier is a new addition to Rackspace's suite of security services, which focuses on customer application uptime. Rackspace offers customers availability & performance monitoring, managed firewalls and proactive patching by certified level-three technicians offering 24X7 Fanatical Support.

About Rackspace Managed Hosting

Rackspace Managed Hosting(TM) is a leading provider of managed Web hosting solutions. Founded in 1998, Rackspace offers a wide range of managed services for hosting platforms of all sizes and complexity, including burstable connectivity, 99.999% uptime SLA, load balancing, security and patching, advanced storage solutions and disaster recovery. Rackspace has received numerous industry awards for its brand of customer service, known as Fanatical Support(TM), and was awarded the Frost & Sullivan Customer Value Enhancement (CVE) Award in 2002 and 2003. For more information, visit www.rackspace.com, or call 800-961-2888.

SOURCE: Rackspace Managed Hosting

Rackspace Managed Hosting, San Antonio
Annalie Drusch, 210-892-4000, ext. 1234
adrusch@rackspace.com
or
Bridgeman Communications for Rackspace
Christine Cayer, 617-742-7270
christine@bridgeman.com

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