DDoS attacks no longer rely on sheer size to be effective — frequency has become the attacker’s weapon of choice. In 2024, organizations protected by Corero faced an average of 11DDoS attacks per day, a 5% year-over-year increase and part of a steady climb that has continued since 2018 (Corero’s 2025 Threat Intelligence Report). The vast majority of these attacks stayed below 1 Gbps, deliberately designed to slip under traditional volumetric thresholds while still degrading availability and performance. Far from being harmless “background noise,” these constant, short-lived attacks are used to probe for weaknesses, measure response times, test mitigation thresholds, and distract security teams ahead of more targeted operations.
At the same time, the DDoS landscape is becoming increasingly polarized. While mid-sized attacks continue to decline, high-volume assaults exceeding 10 Gbps are surging, driven by larger, more automated botnets, and the exploitation of vulnerable IoT devices. Application-layer attacks are also on the rise, with HTTP floods, API abuse ,and platform-specific campaigns shifting the battleground from bandwidth to business logic. Throughout 2024, Corero observed a growing use of multi-vector and “chained” attacks, rapidly switching protocols every 30–60 seconds to exploit even brief delays in detection.
Although comprehensive data for 2025 is not yet available, Corero anticipates these trends will persist—making adaptive, real-time next generation DDoS protection essential for organizations that want to stay resilient in an increasingly evasive and automated threat environment. And the good news is that Corero SmartWall ONE serves as the foundation for M247 Global’s DDoS protection services, providing enterprise-grade, always-on defense against modern threats
The new case for DDoS protection: when “All Green” isn’t safe
When 82% of DDoS attacks remain under 1Gbps, the threat to business continuity changes fundamentally.
These attacks are not designed to make headlines—they are engineered to go unnoticed. Sub-threshold DDoS campaigns quietly exhaust firewall resources, degrade API performance, and destabilize customer-facing services while monitoring dashboards remain “green.” Legacy cloud scrubbers and ISP-level defenses were never built to detect this kind of low-volume, high-frequency abuse, leaving organizations blind to an attack that feels like an internal performance problem rather than an external threat.
This invisibility comes at a steep cost. Corero data shows that most organizations still act reactively, investing in DDoS protection only after disruption occurs—when options are limited and costs spike. The result is a compounding “Reactive Premium”: emergency procurement at inflated prices, rushed deployments during live incidents, extended downtime, and long-term damage to customer trust and operational momentum.
As attackers shift from brute force to precision erosion, proactive, always-on DDoS protection is no longer a technical upgrade—it’s a financial and operational necessity.
NextGen DDoS attacks demand next-generation DDoS protection
DDoS attacks dominated the European cyber landscape in 2024-2025, making up 77% of all reported incidents (2025 ENISA Threat Landscape). Cybercriminals have turned DDoS attacks from occasional nuisances into relentless, highly sophisticated threats. Leveraging AI, automation, large-scale botnets and compromised infrastructure, these next-gen attacks are smarter, stealthier, and massively scalable, targeting multiple systems simultaneously.
Here’s a quick look at the key tactics used in next-generation DDoS attacks:
• AI-driven attacks use behavior mimicry, CAPTCHA bypassing, and real-time traffic adaptation to evade traditional rule-based defenses
• Automation at scale: API-driven attack platforms enabling low-effort, multi-target campaigns with minimal human oversight
• NextGen DDoS attacks combine Layer 3 floods with Layer 7 HTTP or API attacks to disrupt services across multiple layers
• Evasive tactics: Carpet-bombing, IPv6 abuse, ISP masking, and geo-spoofing to expand reach and bypass static defenses
• Powerful botnets: Exploitation of enterprise servers and routers, increasing both volumetric and application-layer attack impact
• Stealth & amplification: Leveraging Internet services and infrastructure to boost attack power while staying under detection thresholds.
In addition, Omdia warns that “burst attacks”—short, high-intensity DDoS “pulse waves lasting often less than 10 minutes — can slip past cloud defenses and probe infrastructure for future strikes. Defending against these rapid, “hit-and-run” attacks requires local, on-premises mitigation to stay ahead of evolving threats.
Facing increasingly sophisticated threats, next-generation DDoS protection must be flexible and adaptive, automated, multi-layered, AI-driven, and capable of real-time response.
Corero SmartWall ONE provides NextGen DDoS protection for M247 Global customers
Corero SmartWall ONE is a modular, platform-based on-premises DDoS protection solution designed for flexible, scalable, and adaptive deployment. It supports physical or virtual appliances and enables seamless in-place upgrades without hardware or software replacement, ensuring protection adapts as organizational demands evolve.
At its core, SmartWall ONE combines management, analytics, and network threat defense modules to detect, analyze, and respond to/mitigate attacks in real time.
• SmartWall ONE Management acts as the platform’s brain, configuring all components and orchestrating responses;
• SmartWall ONE Analytics delivers real-time reporting and dashboards for full visibility;
• SmartWall ONE Network Threat Defense (NTD) — hardware or software appliances detect DDoS attacks and actively block them when deployed as a “protector”.
SmartWall ONE offers multiple deployment architectures—inline, data path, and scrubbing—for millisecond detection and mitigation, minimal latency, and full traffic visibility. Its adaptive protection automatically handles both network- and application-layer attacks, while integration with a wide range of edge routers ensures precise, targeted traffic filtering and uninterrupted service, even during high-volume or multi-vector attacks.
SmartWall’s intelligent protection includes behavioral Smart-Rules and programmable Flex-Rules to detect and block volumetric attacks, including zero-day techniques, while predictive DDoS intelligence feeds help anticipate emerging threats. The platform also identifies and mitigates botnets, source floods, and fragmented or malformed packets, applying automatic fragment blocking.
Corero’s solution defends against a wide spectrum of attacks, from resource exhaustion (e.g., malformed packets, invalid segments, DNS NXDOMAIN water torture, TLS renegotiation) to volumetric floods (TCP, UDP,SYN, ICMP, HTTP/HTTPS, and carpet bombing), as well as reflective amplification attacks like NTP, DNS, and CLDAP. This ensures organizations are protected against both common and sophisticated DDoS threats, maintaining service continuity and network availability.
SmartWall ONE serves as the foundation for M247 Global’s DDoS protection services, providing enterprise-grade, always-on defense against modern threats. With real-time attack visibility, custom dashboards, and scalable protection of up to 100 Gbps, M247 Global delivers 24/7 monitoring, rapid response, and proactive threat management.
