Prolexic Protects OnCourse Systems for Education, SaaS Applications against DDoS Attacks

Prolexic, the global leader in Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection services, announced today that OnCourse Systems for Education,  a provider of software-as-a-service (SaaS) K-12 applications, has selected its PLXproxy DDoS mitigation service.

OnCourse applications are used by schools and school districts in 40 U.S. states, and its website has tens of thousands of visitors daily.

OnCourse engaged Prolexic after three denial of service attacks earlier this year.

UDP floods hit the company’s website at 8 a.m. on weekdays just as the school day was getting underway for OnCourse’s school district customers.

Approximately four hours of downtime resulted from each attack, affecting the availability of attendance tracking, grading, student information, discipline tracking, and other SaaS applications. 

After two DDoS mitigation service providers failed to prevent and stop these attacks, the company engaged Prolexic’s emergency DDoS mitigation service.

The cyber attackers abandoned their efforts as soon as they detected OnCourse was routing traffic through Prolexic’s 1.5 Tbps cloud-based DDoS mitigation platform. OnCourse has not come under a DDoS attack since becoming a Prolexic client.

“OnCourse has learned from experience that there is no rhyme or reason to the motives of cyber attackers,” said Stuart Scholly, president at Prolexic.

“That is why DDoS protection and a well-rehearsed DDoS response plan are essential for every company that has an online presence, regardless of industry or size.”

Prior to working with Prolexic, OnCourse had no visibility into the source of the malicious traffic and which attack vectors were being used.

Other DDoS mitigation providers could not provide attack forensics, which OnCourse could have used to build a defense against future attacks.

Now, as a Prolexic customer, OnCourse has access to deep network analytics and DDoS attack forensics through PLXportal.

PLXportal is a secure online resource that gives Prolexic customers a real-time view of what is happening on their network and Prolexic’s DDoS mitigation infrastructure before, during and after a denial of service attack.

“Like many companies, we thought that we would not be a target of a DDoS attack,” said Mark Yelcick, chief technology officer and partner at OnCourse Systems for Education. “We have learned that firewalls and intrusion protection systems are not enough to be completely protected against DDoS. We simply cannot afford downtime brought about by a DDoS attack. That’s why we chose Prolexic for DDoS protection.”