1st October 2026 13:00-14:00 CET
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks continue to evolve in scale, sophistication, and impact, posing significant challenges for National Research and Education Networks (NRENs), universities, research institutions, and their communities. As digital services become increasingly critical to teaching, collaboration, and scientific research, ensuring network availability has never been more important.
This session will provide attendees with a practical introduction to modern DDoS threats, beginning with the fundamentals of how these attacks work, why they continue to be effective, and how the threat landscape has changed since the early attacks. Participants will gain insight into the trends shaping today’s environment, including larger attack volumes, multi-vector campaigns, and the growing complexity of mitigation efforts.
The webinar will focus specifically on the challenges faced by the research and education sector. NRENs support highly distributed environments, open collaboration models, and diverse user communities, which can create unique security considerations. Through real-world examples and case studies, attendees will explore how DDoS attacks can affect educational institutions, research programs, online learning platforms, and critical digital services.
The session will also examine current best practices for strengthening resilience against DDoS attacks. Topics will include improving visibility across network infrastructure, accelerating attack detection, understanding the role of layered defense strategies, and developing effective mitigation plans that reduce operational disruption.
Key Learning Objectives
By attending this webinar, participants will:
- Understand the fundamentals of DDoS attacks and their evolution over time.
- Identify the major trends and challenges shaping the 2026 DDoS threat landscape.
- Learn why research and education institutions are attractive targets and how attacks can affect their operations.
- Review examples of real-world attacks and lessons learned from the sector.
- Explore industry best practices for DDoS detection, response, and mitigation.
- Gain practical recommendations for improving network resilience and service availability.
