Methods and systems for a scalable solution to behavioral Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks targeting a network are provided. According to one embodiment, a method to determine the scaling treatment is provided for various granular layer parameters of the Open System Interconnection (OSI) model for communication systems. A hardware-based apparatus helps identify packet rates and determine packet rate thresholds through continuous and adaptive learning with multiple DDoS attack mitigation components. The system can be scaled up by stacking multiple DDoS attack mitigation components to provide protection against large scale DDoS attacks by distributing load across these stacked components.