Cyberattacks are a huge problem nowadays.

Unfortunately, in a day and age of rapid technological expansion, hacks have become the norm. Online businesses are vulnerable more than ever, and the numbers (statistics) support it.

In fact, it is estimated that half of all websites will face an attack at least once in their lifetime. Higher profile companies have their sites targeted all the time, often resulting in business costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The public sector is also at risk–the SEC recently revealed that EDGAR, its filing system, was subject to a hack back in 2016. The breach was only discovered earlier this year, with authorities still uncertain whether or not the data was used for insider trading. Facebook and Twitter are also being probed as to whether or not their platforms were used by Russian hackers in an attempt to sway the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election.

Further, the systems that offer consumers CDN (content distribution network) and DDoS mitigation services require rethink as well. These solution use bandwidths from servers in different locations around the globe to press forward web content so that visitors experience much faster load times.

However, traditional CDN and DDoS protection platforms charge clients extremely high fees because they are forced to maintain physical sources for bandwidth around the globe. This cost is passed directly onto the consumer in some capacity.

Thankfully, the recent rise in blockchain technology has offered a viable solution to these problems.

Gladius, is getting substantial public interest by providing a CDN (content delivery network) and DDoS protection together. Gladius’ blockchain platform offers a cheaper, faster and more secure alternative to traditional cyber security programs like Cloudflare and Akamai.

The Frequency and Impact of DDoS Attacks

DDoS attacks are similar to the blitzkrieg strategy used by the Germans in WWII. One computer system is breached and corrupted, and the others in the network follow quickly. The hostile network is then focused on another network or server, and once the attack is initiated, the victim is met with an onslaught of requests.

The purpose of the attack is to crash the system, creating a way for hackers to breach the network’s defenses. Added to this is the ensuing PR nightmare as angry customer complain of downtime lasting an average of six hours per attack. To date there have been over 300,000 attacks with costs of more than $150 billion total. Companies have done their best to ramp up their network and cyber security defenses, but often at a high cost and an undeterminable reward.

Gladius operates differently from traditional, centralized DDoS protection programs in its technology and in its structure. First, Gladius is a decentralized blockchain system that works by pooling together shared bandwidth to fight the attacks. Traditional systems rely on centralized bandwidth and computing power, passing on costs to subscribers. In contrast, Gladius is able to utilize the composite bandwidth of users on the platform to create a community based defense system. The decentralization of the blockchain technology results in a low cost, high bandwidth solution.