AOS must manage excess bandwidth to limit the effects of packet flooding types of denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.

A network element experiencing a DoS attack will not be able to handle production traffic load. The high utilization and CPU caused by a DoS attack will also have an effect on control keep-alives and timers used for neighbor peering, resulting in route flapping, and will eventually sinkhole production traffic.

The device must be configured to contain and limit a DoS attack's effect on the device's resource utilization. The use of redundant components and load balancing are examples of mitigating "flood-type" DoS attacks through increased capacity.

Verify the AOS configuration using the web interface:

Navigate to Configuration >> Services >> Firewall.

If the organization-defined safeguards are not enabled to protect against known DoS attacks, this is a finding.

Configure AOS using the web interface:

Navigate to Configuration >> Services >> Firewall and enable DoS protection in accordance with organization-defined policy.

Click Submit >> Pending Changes >> Deploy Changes.