ProtectDDoS: A Platform for Trustworthy Offering and Recommendation of Protections

As the dependency of business on digital services to offer their products increases, their vulnerability to cyberattacks increases. In this sense, besides providing innovative and flexible services, busi- ness owners must focus on investing in robust cybersecurity mechanisms to prevent cyberattacks. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks remains one of the most dangerous cyberattacks, leading to several prob- lems, such as service disruption, financial loss, and reputation harm, for companies and end-users. Even though several providers offer protections for different types of DDoS attacks, there is still a lack of catalogs or solu- tions that help network operators to access and filter information in order to select the most suitable protection for a specific demand. Thus, in this paper, a platform for offering and recommendation of DDoS protection, named ProtectDDoS, is proposed. ProtectDDoS provides a blockchain- based catalog where DDoS protection providers can announce details regarding their services, while interested users can filter or obtain rec- ommendations of DDoS protection according to their specific demands (e.g., price, attacks supported, and geolocation constraints). ProtectD- DoS provides a smart contract that maintains the integrity of the data about the protections available and provides tamper-proof reputations. To evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of ProtectDDoS, a proto- type was implemented and a case study conducted. Further, a discussion concerning additional costs, including the interaction with the smart contract, is provided.