Setting Up DefensePro For AWS DDoS Mitigation

AWS workloads can absorb ordinary traffic spikes, but a distributed denial-of-service attack can still exhaust application, network, or security controls. Radware DefensePro adds specialised behavioural detection and mitigation for volumetric, protocol, and application-layer attacks, giving infrastructure teams another control point beyond standard AWS security groups.

The right design depends on where the protected service is exposed. Public-facing workloads may use an internet-facing Application Load Balancer, Network Load Balancer, CloudFront distribution, or a public EC2 address. Private applications may require traffic inspection through a transit architecture before requests reach internal load balancers and services.

Australian organisations also need to account for latency between AWS regions and users. Sydney is the usual starting point for east-coast workloads, while Melbourne and Perth users may follow different network paths. A mitigation design should preserve application performance during normal traffic and provide a controlled route for attack traffic when an event occurs.

Before implementation, confirm the supported DefensePro virtual appliance or service model, licensing, AWS marketplace availability, and current Radware deployment documentation. The vendor’s Radware reference material is useful when checking product terminology, firmware requirements, and integration options.

Choose The AWS Protection Architecture

A common pattern places DefensePro VA in dedicated inspection subnets across at least two Availability Zones. Traffic is directed through the appliance before reaching the protected workload, with separate management and data interfaces where the supported image requires them. Network Load Balancers, Gateway Load Balancer integrations, or routing appliances may be appropriate, depending on the DefensePro version and the desired inline topology.

An out-of-path design can be easier to operate for selected public services. The normal route continues through CloudFront or an AWS load balancer, while suspicious traffic is redirected to a Radware scrubbing service or mitigation path. This approach avoids making every request dependent on an inline appliance, although route changes, DNS behaviour, and return-path symmetry must be tested carefully.

For internet-facing applications, AWS Shield Standard remains enabled by default, and Shield Advanced may provide additional AWS-native protection and response features. DefensePro should complement that control rather than replace it blindly. Document which platform handles edge filtering, which handles behavioural mitigation, and where escalation occurs during an attack.

Prepare VPC Networking And Routing

Create dedicated subnets for management, inspection, and protected traffic. Use separate route tables and restrictive security groups, allowing administration only from approved bastion hosts, VPN connections, or identity-aware management networks. Avoid exposing the DefensePro management interface directly to the public internet.

The routing design must keep forward and return traffic consistent. In an inline arrangement, the workload route table sends traffic to the inspection mechanism, and the response path returns through the expected gateway or appliance. AWS Network Firewall, Transit Gateway, Gateway Load Balancer, and custom appliance routing can affect this flow, so validate each hop with VPC Flow Logs and packet captures where available.

Use Elastic IP addresses only where they are required by the chosen deployment model. Assign stable private addresses for management and internal routing, and make sure Network ACLs do not silently block mitigation traffic. If a public service is fronted by an AWS load balancer, protect the load balancer entry point and confirm whether the appliance can see the client source address needed for accurate detection.

Configure Detection And Mitigation Policies

Start with baseline learning rather than aggressive blocking. Collect normal request rates, connection counts, packet sizes, DNS behaviour, and protocol usage for each application. DefensePro policies can then distinguish expected peaks from suspicious patterns such as SYN floods, UDP amplification, malformed packets, connection exhaustion, and sudden source distribution changes.

Build policies around the actual service profile. An API, a gaming endpoint, and a customer portal generate very different traffic. Define protected IPs, ports, protocols, rate thresholds, and trusted management ranges. Apply graduated responses where possible: detect and alert first, rate-limit questionable traffic next, and drop confirmed malicious traffic under a defined policy.

Keep exceptions narrow and time-limited. An allow rule for a monitoring provider or payment gateway should specify the required addresses and ports rather than bypassing protection for an entire subnet. Australian businesses handling personal information should also ensure that telemetry, packet samples, and exported logs are stored and accessed in line with internal privacy controls and the Privacy Act 1988.

Connect Monitoring, Alerts, And Operations

Forward DefensePro events to the organisation’s central logging platform, such as CloudWatch, an Amazon OpenSearch deployment, or an existing SIEM. Track attack type, target, mitigation action, peak rate, dropped volume, false positives, and appliance resource usage. Correlate these records with ALB access logs, CloudFront logs, VPC Flow Logs, and application metrics.

Create alerts for sustained attack conditions, management-plane failures, route changes, and capacity thresholds. An operations team working across Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth should define an after-hours escalation path rather than relying on one engineer to notice a dashboard alert. Record who can change routing, who can approve emergency blocks, and who communicates with the ISP, cloud provider, and business owners.

Retention and access settings deserve particular attention in regulated environments. The Security of Critical Infrastructure Act 2018 may apply to certain Australian organisations and assets, while sector-specific obligations can impose additional reporting or resilience requirements. Keep an evidence trail for policy changes and mitigation events, including the operator, timestamp, reason, and rollback decision.

Test Failover And Tune The Design

Test the complete traffic path before declaring the deployment ready. Generate controlled, authorised load in a staging environment and verify that legitimate requests continue to reach the application while the expected signatures or thresholds trigger mitigation. Do not conduct destructive testing against production or public infrastructure without written approval and tightly defined limits.

Run failure scenarios for an unavailable appliance, an unhealthy Availability Zone, a broken route, and a lost management connection. Confirm that health checks remove failed components, that traffic does not loop between gateways, and that a rollback path exists. DNS TTLs, BGP announcements, GRE tunnels, and scrubbing-provider procedures should be documented according to the selected architecture.

Review thresholds after real traffic patterns emerge. Seasonal campaigns, Melbourne sporting events, end-of-financial-year activity, and large online retail promotions can create legitimate surges that resemble attacks. Regularly update signatures, firmware, IAM permissions, and runbooks, while preserving a tested baseline configuration so the mitigation service remains predictable under pressure.