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Recently, cyber attackers launched a series of DDoS attacks against online betting companies at the height of the Australian horse racing season known as Spring Carnival. Spring Carnival is the busiest and most profitable time for online betting companies in Australia and any revenue losses due to a website outage would be financially disastrous.

At the beginning of Spring Carnival, Betstar experienced a 30-minute site outage due to a DDoS attack on one of its competitors with whom it shares infrastructure in a colocation data center. The high-volume Layer 3 DDoS attack peaked at 10 Gbps and crippled the data center, which led to an eight-hour site outage for Betstar’s competitor, and brief downtime for Betstar due to collateral damage. Two other online betting companies came under DDoS attack during the same weekend. The continued threat of DDoS attacks against the online betting industry led Betstar to seek DDoS mitigation services from Prolexic.

“Betstar wisely has taken proactive action against DDoS attacks,” said Stuart Scholly, president at Prolexic. "DDoS attackers are known to target specific industries and unleash their most potent attacks during peak revenue-generating periods.”

With the racing season just getting underway, it was especially urgent that Betstar quickly deploy the Prolexic PLXproxy DDoS mitigation solution. Prolexic and Betstar worked over a weekend to ensure a fast deployment. Within three days from signed contract, the Prolexic solution was up and running, well in time to ensure 24/7 uptime for online Betstar customers betting on the Melbourne Cup, Australia’s equivalent to the Kentucky Derby, and other Spring Carnival races.