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Barracuda Active DDoS Prevention

Understanding Operating Modes

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Barracuda Active DDoS Prevention protects you from volumetric DDoS by automatically identifying and mitigating attacks. Barracuda Active DDoS Prevention has two operating modes: Peace and War . Operations are different in the two modes.

  • Peace – To maximize performance of your application, DDoS protection features are turned off when not needed. In Peace mode, Barracuda Networks does not enable DDoS protection features. 
  • War When Barracuda Networks detects that you are being targeted with a volumetric DDoS attack, Barracuda Networks automatically enables DDoS protection features to defend you against the attack.
    • Barracuda Networks enables different protection features based on the type of DDoS attack detected. For example, if you are being targeted with a SYN flood, Barracuda Networks enables defenses that detect fake SYN packets. For your security, Barracuda Networks does not release specific information on the ways in which attacks are detected or the specific mitigations deployed for any given attack.
    • You cannot change Barracuda Active DDoS Prevention configuration while in War mode.

By default, Barracuda Networks automatically detects DDoS attacks and switches the operating mode to War. When the attack has subsided, Barracuda Networks automatically switches to Peace operating mode.

Overriding Automatic Switching

Caution

Use caution when overriding Barracuda Active DDoS Prevention. Automatic switching offers the best protection for your system.

Temporarily 

You can temporarily override Barracuda Networks' automatic determination and force the system to be in a specific operating mode. You can do this if you believe you are under attack but Barracuda Networks is not detecting it, or if Barracuda Networks has detected an attack that you do not think is an actual attack.

Always
Warning

Turning off automatic detection and switching is NOT recommended. It can leave your system vulnerable to attacks. It is highly recommended that you allow Barracuda Networks to automatically switch modes during an attack.

If you choose, you can turn off automatic switching between operating modes and switch modes manually. However, if you do not quickly activate War mode when a DDoS attack begins, your application will likely be offline from the attack, and your application servers may even crash due to the overload.