Over the last couple of years, a major online poker and casino firm based in Costa Rica was targeted by hackers who threatened to take down the website unless a sizable amount of cash was transferred to a bitcoin wallet.

While analyzing the ransom demand, the IT security staff of the online poker firm noticed that the cybercrime crew was not making idle threats. The servers had already been pinged, and those making threats knew that there were major tournaments underway on the day the attack was planned; there were $1 million payout guarantees and hundreds of players had already sent their buy-in cash.

The aforementioned poker firm never paid the ransom amount; instead, it was forced to cancel the tournament and issued refunds as the hackers laid siege to the servers located in Costa Rica with a massive, distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack that momentarily knock them offline. That was in 2014; a year later, the same hacking crew returned with a similar ransom demand. This time, however, the poker firm has a dedicated DDOS mitigation team that put together a strategy to simply pause live tournaments and let players choose whether to rejoin immediately or later. Once again, the hackers launched a formidable DDOS attack, but this time the tournament continued with only slight interruptions for players.

The situation above could also be experienced by a sportsbook in Costa Rica, and it can happen during a major wagering event such as Super Bowl Sunday. DDOS attacks are always a concern, and they may not always be carried out by groups seeking ransom payments; they may be launched by anarchists or activists.

In Costa Rica, sportsbooks managed by pay-per-head (PPH) service providers such as IDSca.com enjoy the benefir of security and reliability in terms of networks and communications infrastructure.

U.S. residents who enjoy wagering on sports do not usually travel to Las Vegas to place bets; instead, they seek local options. A good portion of online and mobile wagering is handled in Costa Rica by PPH sportsbooks IDSca.com clients tend to be neighborhood bookmakers who take local action through a PPH back office safely located in Costa Rica.

U.S. residents who enjoy wagering on sports do not usually travel to Las Vegas to place bets; instead, they seek local options. A good portion of online and mobile wagering is handled in Costa Rica by PPH providers such as IDSca.com, a pioneer in this field. IDSca.com clients tend to be neighborhood bookmakers who take local action through a PPH back office safely located in Costa Rica.

Bookmakers who choose cheaper and less reputable PPH providers in Costa Rica will always risk service interruptions due to DDOS and other cyber attacks that cannot be prevented or mitigated. The worst-case scenario will always be a network breach that targets customers’ personal information.

Physical and IT security is always tight at the IDSca.com data centers, which are made redundant beyond Costa Rica for the purpose of constant availability in case of cyber attacks or disasters. Since the PPH operations of IDSca.com do not handle funds, they are not a target for cyber thieves; however, security is always provided to protect against crimes such as distributed denial of service (DDOS) and man-in-the-middle attacks.