How can a FortiGate device mitigate DDoS attacks?

A FortiGate device mitigates DDoS attacks effectively through traffic shaping and rate limiting. Traffic shaping involves controlling the flow of traffic into and out of the network, thus ensuring that the network does not become overwhelmed during a DDoS attack. By allocating bandwidth optimally and prioritizing critical applications, FortiGate can maintain network performance even under duress.

Rate limiting complements this by setting thresholds for the number of connections or requests that can be made to a server or service over a given period. By preventing any single user or source from consuming excessive resources, FortiGate can protect key services and maintain their availability.

While increasing bandwidth might seem like a solution, it does not address the fundamental issue of an attack overwhelming resources; it merely provides a larger capacity which can still be flooded. Enhanced logging techniques are more about monitoring and analyzing traffic after an event rather than directly preventing or mitigating attacks. Implementing software updates is an essential maintenance function to secure vulnerabilities, but it does not directly counteract DDoS attack scenarios. Thus, using traffic shaping and rate limiting is the most effective and proactive approach to mitigating DDoS attacks.