By Peter Williams, Managing Director for Asia Pacific

As explored below, many aspects go to make the online gaming community successful and sustainable. An effective partnership for network security, performance, and server positioning is often overlooked. What good is a perfectly adapted user interface with rich features, if effective delivery to end-users is unachievable? The impact on revenue can be substantial in addition to inevitable client retention challenges.

Regulatory and Compliance

Choose a partner that understands your business. This is essential as the iGaming industry is extremely volatile with ever-changing landscapes. Influences beyond the control of your business can dictate a requirement for re-location or extension of services to alternative locations. The ideal partner would demonstrate a flexible contractual approach and be in a position to accommodate change.

Flexible Service Proposition

Partner solutions should map to the iGaming industry. Often global players serve all verticals and have inflexible services. Gaming companies require flexibility – co-locating primary services in specific locations to meet regulatory needs, but with integration to private and public clouds to allow burst or use in disaster scenarios. Management of niche network routes and performance is key – especially in Asia where consistency is a major challenge. The network partner should have an understanding of the markets you serve, your latency tolerance thresholds, and be in a position to back this up with a service level agreement (SLA).

Download time is a key component of end-user experience. If a site takes too long, users will go elsewhere. According to Kissmetrics a one second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions. A site making $100,000 a day, could see $2.5million lost revenue each year. Mapping this to iGaming where loyalty is low and choice is high, the results would be far more damaging to the bottom line. To provide a consistent experience your network partner should have sufficient capacity and diversity to ensure network performance is consistent.

Security

Application and DDoS attacks come in many forms. Successful attacks can sink your business and poor defense comes at a huge cost. Your security partner should have sufficient capacity and effective tools to deal with attacks in real time. They should understand your traffic profile and mitigate without impacting end-users.

Capacity Planning

Finally, partners should have extensive global reach to places you need to be, which therefore allows expansion or re-location under a single partner agreement. They should have sufficient overhead to allow for unforeseen growth and volume spikes that occur during major sporting events.

In summary, selection should concentrate on flexibility, global reach, a service suite designed to meet requirements of iGaming, and have ample overhead for growth.

Source: iGB Asian Gaming Focus

By Nick Nally, Managing Director for the Americas

The current hiatus gives us a chance to take stock and position now for the future.

In the world of online sports betting and casino we have seen a complete reversal of fortunes in the activity of the two bedfellows over the past few weeks with sports events being cancelled globally, and corresponding betting activity coming to a grinding halt. This has provided an opportunity for online casino and poker as an alternative outlet for some. But is the USA ready?

Missed opportunity?

It is almost two years since the repeal of PASPA and there has been an unprecedented wave of activity in the US to bring online sports betting to the market. In its haste though, an opportunity may have been missed in some states to bring forward regulations for online casino and poker alongside sports betting regulations. With some very successful models in states such as New Jersey and Pennsylvania, now is possibly the perfect time to consider the introduction of such legislation or to fast-track existing legislation. There is a window of opportunity for the states and this unfortunate pause may be the right time to act – especially when some industry leaders are predicting that the US market will hit $8billion by 2025.

Cybercrime

While the sports betting industry may be taking an unwelcome break, cybercriminals are more active than ever with national cybersecurity agencies in Europe and the USA warning of threats posed by criminal gangs and state-backed hackers. The outbreak of COVID-19 has seen an unprecedented number of attacks against all types of businesses and organisations; a lot of these preying on people’s vulnerabilities and fears. The global concentration around this pandemic has shifted focus and the movement towards working from home has provided weak points in systems that criminals are happy to exploit. We have seen a notable increase in attacks against the online gambling industry in the past few days and weeks.

In the US, the online sports betting market is still, to a large degree, a nascent market, despite being almost two years old. The number of states going online is increasing rapidly but there is still only a modest proportion of the population that can legally bet online. The US market is predicted to grow exponentially over the next few years with an ever-increasing amount of confidential data being held in-state by licensees and operators. Sports betting companies have always been targeted by hackers and cyber criminals, but the advent of huge corporate brands into this space makes it inevitable that they will become the focus of large-scale attacks and ransomware demands.

There are industry and corporate responsibility concerns regarding the protection of this data, and it is incumbent upon all stakeholders to work together to this end. Within the online gambling market it is critical that licensees, operators, service providers, data center providers and, most importantly, regulators act together to ensure the integrity of the industry. Now is the time for this sector to put in place the building blocks to grow into the future.

Protecting customers’ data

At the heart of this should be protection of customers’ data. To this end, regulators need to know where bets are placed, where the data resides and examine whether there are appropriate practices and safeguards in place. While licensees and operators should be ensuring that they meet these criteria, it is essential that regulators demand rigorous and internationally recognised standards when it comes to this area. When it comes to data centers, there are a number of security and compliance standards that a provider should meet as a minimum, such as ISO 27001, SSAE 18 SOC 1 & 2, and PCI DSS.

These, coupled with a range of security products, ensure that customers are well prepared for what seems like an inevitable onslaught of attacks now and into the future. In the US market, Continent 8 works with a number of partners to ensure that all of the data centers that we offer meet the above standards. In addition, we provide an expanding range of security offerings including DDoS detection and mitigation and WAF to complement the above standards.

Source: Gambling Insider

Opportunities created by the COVID-19 emergency are being exploited by criminals, hacktivists and others, resulting in a massive increase in the volume and scale of cyber attacks in recent weeks.

Continent 8’s own data shows a significant increase during April which saw a 200% increase compared to the first three months of this year. We have seen a steady increase in the number of large scale (10Gbps or greater) attacks – we have recorded more than 20 such incidents in recent weeks.

To help understand the methods and tactics being used by attackers, and how we can help you to protect your organisation, we teamed up with our trusted partner Radware for an exclusive webinar on May 7th which was part of EGR’s Weekly Virtual Series.

It was introduced by EGR Event Content Manager, Fergus Maunsell, who then handed over to the three expert panelists: Innovation Director Leon Allen and Head of Global Network Services Edward O’Connor (both from Continent 8); and Pascal Geenens, Director, Threat Intelligence at Radware.

Leon set the scene by giving a brief summary of Continent 8’s many years of experience in cyber security, and he then went on to explain the background to the current spike in attacks. The first part of Pascal’s presentation focused on the nature of DDoS attacks, the low costs involved for those who want to rent attacks, the individuals, groups and organisations involved, and their motives. He also explained how botnets work.

Edward cut through the technical jargon to give a fascinating explanation of why last year was so significant because of trends that emerged in Q2 and Q3 which have since continued, and then accelerated in recent months due to the COVID-19 crisis. From 2013 to 2018, he said, ‘traditional’ flood type attacks were the most common, but 2019 was different because there were significant changes in the second half of the year in terms of the pattern of attacks, profiles, and activities. During that time, and into 2020, flood attacks continued, but volumes increased and new types of attack also emerged due largely to opportunities that have been created by the massive increase in the number of connected devices now being used at home.

The last part of the webinar focused on the specific impact of COVID-19 as the panelists explained how and why the pandemic has been exploited by those with malicious motives. Pascal summarised the impact of employees working from home, schools conducting lessons online, and friends and families spending more time using Zoom and other video chat services. Fear and the need for information about COVID-19, he said, has been cynically exploited by attackers – one example being how internet searches for ‘face masks’ and ‘hand sanitizer’ have been used to drive hits to malware ridden websites.

The webinar concluded with a Q&A session. There was a prize for the best question and Continent 8 will be sending the winner (chosen by the panel) a hamper packed with delicious goodies and treats.

Thank you to the panelists, Fergus and the EGR team, and to everyone who watched or submitted questions.

To watch the webinar again click here.

To find out more about Continent 8’s award-winning cyber protection solutions email Leon Allen.