Challenges Providing Security Solutions for National Events
2019 is the 17th consecutive year that ChinaCache was selected to protect the network security of government websites during Chinese national events. At the 70th Chinese National Day Parade on October 1, ChinaCache provided security solutions for Xinhua News, People’s Daily and China.com.cn.
Even with 17 years of experience, we did not treat it lightly and were prepared for the challenges.
Challenges Providing Security Solutions for National Events
1. Security Threats
Attacks, hijacking and tampering attempts on websites could happen at any time. A large-scale attack will not only affect the service continuity of a single client being attacked but also may lead to disruption of service for other clients on the same network.
2. Uncertainty of Resource Requirements
It is hard to predict resource requirements in advance unknowing how many traffic websites will get during special events, which increases the difficulty of resource scheduling. In addition, how to effectively allocate resources between special events and daily customer maintenance is also a challenge for CDN companies.
3. Effectively Manage Content Refresh
During a live broadcast, the news update frequency is typically several times higher than usual. The updated content must be synchronized to show on the webpages with low latency. At the same time, back-to-origin requests must be limited to avoid causing traffic spike at the customer origin.
How Does ChinaCache Prepare for Event Support?
1. Security Approach
With years of experience and based on clients’ security requirements, we have upgraded our CDN with security features to block attacks with advanced technologies including WAF and bot detection. A dual operation center model ensures any changes in attacks would be addressed in real-time. During the 70th National Parade, we blocked more than 88 million suspicious requests.
2. Resource Preparation and Scheduling
The resource preparation and scheduling on key nodes begin one month prior to the event. At the same time, our security experts would arrange data backup plans in case of unexpected resource shortages.
3. Live Stream Quality Monitoring
Intelligent streaming tests are implemented on major nodes to ensure there are no freezing, frame skipping and asynchronous sound issues.
4. Content Refresh Set Up
To make sure all the content on the websites are up to date, our technical experts re-validate caching policies and test content refresh commands before the event date. In rare circumstances that automatic content refresh does not function properly, our technical support steps in immediately to perform manual refreshes, making sure content are up to date within two minutes.
With the rapid development and transformation of internet technology, ChinaCache will keep up with the innovation and solve clients’ content delivery and security problems. To learn more, please contact us here.