Staying Online Where Stability Is Not a Given: FastIraq & StormWall Success Story

In regions where digital infrastructure operates under constant external pressure, network stability can never be taken for granted. For internet service providers, availability goes far beyond a technical KPI — it is a matter of trust, accountability, and national-scale reliability .

FastIraq’s story shows how an ISP working in a high-risk environment can build resilient infrastructure, withstand persistent DDoS threats, and turn security into a competitive advantage. A key role in this transformation was played by StormWall — but the story begins earlier.

Customer: FastIraq

FastIraq is one of Iraq’s leading ICT and internet service providers. The company delivers high-availability connectivity, IP transit, managed security services, and enterprise-grade internet solutions to government institutions, financial organizations, banks, oil and gas companies, large enterprises, and other ISPs across the country.

Operating in a complex and demanding environment, FastIraq’s mission is to provide stable, secure, and scalable network services where downtime can lead to serious operational, economic, and reputational consequences across entire industries.

Business Challenge: Operating Under Constant Threat

For FastIraq, network availability is business-critical. Many of its customers operate in sectors where even short disruptions can trigger financial losses, regulatory consequences, or service failures affecting thousands of users. 

As FastIraq’s customer base expanded, the frequency and scale of DDoS attacks increased significantly. During peak periods — often coinciding with geopolitical or social events — the network faced up to 15-20 major attacks per month targeting backbone infrastructure and key customers.

The most severe volumetric attacks exceeded 400 Gbps and combined multiple vectors, including UDP floods, DNS amplification, and SYN floods. These attacks saturated uplink capacity and were aimed not only at FastIraq itself, but directly at its customers: government portals, online banking platforms, and billing systems of other ISPs.

In Iraq, this level of threat is not unusual. Geopolitical tensions, regional cyber activity, and competitive pressure all contribute to a consistently elevated risk landscape.

Initially, FastIraq relied on basic on-premises defenses and upstream filtering. While sufficient for smaller incidents, this approach proved ineffective against large-scale, multi-vector attacks. Mitigation required manual intervention, and response times often reached 40-60 minutes — unacceptable for customers in the public and financial sectors.

FastIraq needed a professional solution capable of handling sustained, high-volume attacks without disrupting legitimate traffic.

Solution: Carrier-Grade DDoS Protection for High-Risk Regions

When evaluating DDoS protection providers, FastIraq prioritized reliability, scalability, and proven experience in complex, high-risk environments.

StormWall was chosen based on several key factors:

• Proven performance in high-risk regions with frequent and aggressive DDoS activity
• Fast activation and flexible deployment without major network changes
• Stable mitigation under heavy load, even during large-scale attacks
• Strong technical support during both deployment and live incidents

An additional advantage was StormWall’s presence in geographically close regions, including the UAE and Turkey. This allowed FastIraq to keep added latency for scrubbed traffic within an acceptable 8-12 ms.

Deployment: Fast Integration with Zero Service Disruption

FastIraq integrated StormWall’s DDoS protection using BGP-based traffic redirection and filtering.

The implementation process was completed in a short timeframe and without disruption to existing services. The team deployed a combination of BGP Blackhole Community and Remote Triggered Black Hole (RTBH) mechanisms to ensure precise redirection of attacked prefixes.

Over the course of one week, FastIraq and StormWall engineers jointly fine-tuned detection thresholds and mitigation triggers. This was especially important to account for the specific characteristics of Iraqi traffic, including high volumes of P2P traffic in certain network segments.

The main goals during deployment were clear:

• Correct traffic routing
• Minimal impact on latency
• Zero disruption to existing services

All challenges were resolved quickly through close, hands-on collaboration between FastIraq’s network engineers and StormWall’s technical team.

From Customer to Partner: Expanding the Security Portfolio

After implementing StormWall’s DDoS protection, FastIraq achieved immediate and measurable operational improvements.

DDoS attacks are now detected automatically within 30-90 seconds, with full traffic redirection and scrubbing completed in 3-5 minutes. Over the past year, none of the attacks targeting protected resources resulted in a service outage visible to end users.

Network stability improved significantly during peak traffic periods, enabling FastIraq to confidently offer 99.99% SLA uptime to government and financial sector customers — a decisive competitive differentiator in the local market.

Recognizing both the technical reliability and commercial value of the solution, FastIraq expanded its relationship with StormWall by becoming an official partner. Within the first year of partnership, FastIraq increased revenue from managed security services by 15% and onboarded more than 20 major organizations.

Customers immediately noticed the increased reliability, reinforcing FastIraq’s reputation as a dependable, security-focused provider.

Results: Stability, Confidence, and Trust

“StormWall has helped us significantly enhance our network resilience. Their DDoS protection is reliable, efficient, and backed by excellent support,”

— Timothy Moore, President & CEO, FastIraq.

Since deploying StormWall’s DDoS protection, FastIraq has achieved:

• A significant reduction in downtime, even during peak attack periods
• Fully automated DDoS detection and mitigation without manual intervention
• Improved network stability under high traffic and attack conditions 
• Increased customer confidence, particularly among critical infrastructure clients