We live in a technologically smart era where smartphones are the new norm, and everything you do virtually is stored somewhere in a remote data center. Data has become more valuable than gold, and its security has become far important than the security of your bank accounts or financial infrastructures. Several cyber attacks such as ransomware and DDoS attacks are targeting high-profile organizations. Every day, we come across a new incident which takes place and infects the infrastructure of a particular business. As much as the organizations are taking security precautions, it is found that these precautions aren’t robust enough. It’s because these threats are becoming more and more sophisticated leading individuals into clicking links which they shouldn’t be clicking.
While malware and ransomware are widely discussed on several news platforms, there is one other looming threat which has created a dangerous circumference around the server infrastructures.
What is a DDoS Attack?
One of the most highly damaging attacks which can cripple down any server instance is none other but the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. When such kind of attacks takes place, they simply slow down the server by flushing it with an unwanted amount of spam traffic from various zombie computers.
Thousands of requests are generated each second, and as a result, the system gets overwhelmed and crashes down. While organizations do take considerable measures to sieve the legitimate traffic from the false one, denying people the use of service can overall result in business loss & value degradation.
Why do we term such attacks as distributed? It’s because these attacks don’t come from a single source, but they are originated from multiple sources. Basically, zombie systems are personal systems which are infected with malware. When a cyber-criminal wants to originate a DDoS attack, he recruits these infected systems into a botnet and then controls them to send unwanted requests on a particular website or server. Hence, when a DDoS attack takes place, requests come from many routes. It becomes rather difficult for your IT security team to then identify the source of this attack and finally mitigate it.
What is the Reason Behind Such Attacks?
DDoS attacks can occur because of a number of reasons. The intent behind such attacks is usually blackmailing the owner of the attacked website and ask for a certain amount as ransom. But, that’s not the only reason why someone may target your website; there can be countless other reasons.
For example, competitors often try to make companies cripple down so they can boost their sales on specific occasions. Usually, e-commerce store owners who are eager to increase sales during a holiday season would actually hire a DDoS attacker so they can cripple down other e-commerce stores.
Whether fueled for revenge or just for the thrill of hacktivism, people holding some sort of grudge often reach out DDoS attackers and find such attacks as a well-sought option to turn the tides in their favor.
How Severe Can A DDoS Attack Get?
Although, the life of a DDoS attack is short and may last for a couple of hours or a little more. But, as more and more of these attacks are getting sophisticated by the day, the average time-span of these attacks have increased from a few hours to several days. Most of the time, a short time attack is usually used to send a message to the website owner that if they do not agree to pay the ransom amount, then they should get ready to be affected by this threat for a long period of time on a serious note.
The impact of such attacks can be really devastating. At an average, half of the organizations around the world who had their systems compromised previously stated that it took at least 3 hours to detect these attacks only. These businesses attributed a total cost of at least a quarter of a million dollars per hour at a minimum. And in case, if the DDoS attack remains sustained, you can imagine the loss you can suffer.
While the financial loss is only half the story, organizations also disclosed several other losses; such as the loss of productivity, loss of data, and extremely severe damage to business reputation.
Buying the Right Protection for Your Business
When seeking the right DDoS attack protection service you need to keep the following things in mind:
First off, check out whether the assigned DDoS attack protection service offers consistent monitoring service. A faster response is considered a better option to those who follow a much laidback approach. Henceforth, you need to look for a support that is available 24/7/365 at your expense.
Secondly, it is relatively important that the DDoS protection which you are about to onboard for your online business should be located in your locality or somewhere nearby. Geographical location matters because local DDoS protection services know better which kind of DDoS dangers can occur.
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Best Practices to Defend Against DDoS Attacks
You can implement DDoS protection for your online website in a number of ways. These may involve a blended approach of combining attacks, classifying incoming traffic and multiple other blocking techniques. You can also reroute suspect traffic which can be non-existent to a server.
You can also deploy an intrusion prevention system (IPS) which can readily identify and block DDoS attacks and keep traffic with malicious intent away from the server on purpose. The type of protection which you wish to deploy can be less effective if you don’t follow traditional practices and implement firewalls.
We live in a time where cybersecurity is one of the most important aspects. With each passing day, new innovative technologies are becoming the norm of society, and with the best practices in place, you can defend yourself against DDoS attacks permanently.
