Defending global networks in the era of AI

AI only complicates the digital battleground in a constantly evolving DDoS landscape. Cyber criminals are already leveraging AI-enabled cyberattacks to besiege global networks, threatening to disrupt world economies. Our recent survey revealed that over 50 percent of manufacturing and automotive decision-makers see cybersecurity as their top network challenge, recognizing that AI facilitates a never-ending cycle of cyberattacks and defense in vulnerable industries.

This last point is crucial. Unlike human beings, AI doesn’t have to sleep, eat or take breaks. This provides hackers with a significant advantage, allowing them to cycle through AI-enabled attack vectors continuously, particularly in sectors where one second of downtime results in massive financial losses.

So, what is Arelion’s advantage in stemming cyberattacks across this new frontier?

The value of high-quality network data in an AI-driven ecosystem

AI models, including AI-driven DDoS mitigation solutions, are only as good as the data you feed them. Our breadth of network data, sourced from the world’s #1-ranked backbone network, is our primary advantage in mitigating AI-driven network attacks. We possess high visibility into global network data, allowing us to enable future use cases and enhance the reliability of our DDoS mitigation solution.

By leveraging this vast data, we can react proactively to DDoS attacks and correctively predict attack vectors based on location, available bandwidth and other factors. Due to our extensive experience in protecting the Internet for decades, we are also adept at stopping malicious traffic without disrupting legitimate traffic, which is a delicate (yet vital) balance.

Today and tomorrow’s use cases

Despite innovations on both sides of the cyber battleground, some things don’t change. Scrubbing remains a crucial strength of our DDoS mitigation strategy. DDoS mitigation is still essentially comprised of two concepts: detecting the attack and scrubbing the attack. However, AI can enhance these capabilities to benefit our customers. We’re seeing traffic recognition capabilities advancing as AI reaches a better understanding of what legitimate traffic looks like, with learning times shortening.

We recently expanded our partnership with NETSCOUT to bolster our DDoS mitigation capabilities. This significantly increases the density of network monitoring across our global Internet backbone, providing better protection for enterprises’ high-bandwidth applications. It also empowers us with more granular visibility of traffic patterns, enabling faster detection of anomalies and speedier threat responses.

This makes our DDoS mitigation solution more adaptable and precise, allowing us to better differentiate between massive (but legitimate) data dumps like a Fortnite update, versus malicious data dumps like 2025’s record-breaking Cloudflare DDoS attack. In terms of future use cases, AI may enable service providers to improve their brute force defenses, like Flowspec and RTBH.

While some botnets currently complicate mitigation by merging legitimate and malicious traffic, this future capability could allow service providers to turn a sledgehammer into a scalpel by implementing mitigations down to singular IP addresses and eventually single data streams.

Guardrails and data sovereignty: more crucial than ever

With all its impressive capabilities, AI still requires guardrails and related safety mechanisms to prevent malicious implementations. As a staunch supporter of Net Neutrality, Arelion will continue to pass traffic as a neutral supplier. While technological guardrails are important, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. We’ll get to the point where hackers can generate a deepfaked voice sample of a senior manager from a spoofed phone number that convinces people to hand over their passwords. These issues will become harder for humans to spot, so extensive education is critical.

Meanwhile, global governments are building their own AI agents to improve operational efficiency across national interests. Simultaneously, we’re seeing the increased Balkanization (or fragmentation) of the Internet. These range from minor instances, such as the EU’s DNS infrastructure project, created with the goal of better controlling local Internet traffic routing, to entire countries severely restricting access to content outside the immediate jurisdiction.

Amid these developments, Arelion possesses the network reach and DDoS mitigation capabilities to enable better reliability and access. We can secure local routing, so a government’s AI data doesn’t route outside of its country. We also leverage transparent collaboration with regulatory and government bodies, enabling us to help businesses comply with data residency laws.

As more governments leverage resource-intensive AI infrastructure, we can provide the DDoS protection that keeps GPU clusters and inference endpoints operational in the face of an attack.

Onward to the Nordics

No matter how AI develops, Arelion’s network is empowered with precise DDoS mitigation and related safeguards to protect our customers’ sensitive data and ensure business continuity, even in the event of an attack. Our next blog will cover the Nordic region’s AI boom, showcasing how recent expansions and the availability of renewable energy position us to support our customers’ AI requirements through high-capacity connectivity, no matter where they need it next.

David Young, Product Manager IP and Security