More recent data shows that DDoS attacks are getting bigger and more frequent. The biggest of them, in 2016, was at least 73% bigger than the worst attack experienced in 2015 and, although they are not new, their current scale is scary since they are difficult to block and can cause great losses. But what is it and why is it so worrying?
In today's article, you will better understand how they happen, what their consequences are, and what kind of strategies can protect your company.
What is a DDoS Attack?
A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is an attempt to exhaust the resources available to a network, app, or service so that genuine users cannot gain access. A variety of techniques are used to send requests to a website, which increases its traffic to the point of overloading it, making it virtually inaccessible.
Since 2010, driven largely by the rise of hacker activism, we have seen a revival of the DDoS attack that has led to several innovations in terms of tools, targets, and techniques. Today, it has evolved into attacks that are difficult to detect, targeting applications, bypass corporate security infrastructure, and bypass firewalls to achieve their goal.
How Does a DDoS Attack Occur?
Each DDoS attack happens in a different way and there are countless ways to put them into practice. However, attack vectors generally fall into the following categories: volumetric attacks, exhaustion attacks, and application-layer attacks. More sophisticated hackers combine volumetric, exhaustion, and application layer efforts into a single sustained attack, making it even more difficult to combat and highly effective.
Volumetric attacks attempt to consume the bandwidth of the target service or between a specific network and the rest of the internet. They are generally responsible for congestion and are the most common type of DDoS attack. According to Arbor, they represent about 65% of the total reported.
Exhaustion or protocol attacks, in turn, are those that segment the network connection with firewalls, application servers, and other components of your infrastructure in search of a vulnerability. Probably the most common type of attack of this nature is the ping of death, which sends a large packet of bytes to the destination in order to overload the server. The more the target tries to respond to the pings, the more bandwidth is consumed until the entire system fails.
Application layer attacks target some aspects of an application or service and can be highly effective even from a single machine. Its purpose is to interrupt data transmission between hosts and the most common way to do this is with an HTTP flood.
What Are the Consequences of a DDoS Attack?
A DDoS attack is a threat to business continuity. As organizations have become more dependent on the internet and web-based applications and services, their availability has become as essential as electricity.
Therefore, DDoS is not only a threat to retailers, financial services, and gaming companies that have a high demand for availability. They are also intended for business-critical applications your organization relies on to manage daily operations - email, sales automation tools, and CRMs can be affected by them.
When successful, the DDoS attack can lead to angry customers, loss of revenue, and damage to your brand. On the other hand, if the apps you use are unavailable, your company's operations and your team's productivity are compromised. Internal sites, for example, that are important to many of your partners, when offline, affect the supply chain and can lead to production disruption.
When these attacks are successful it means that your organization is vulnerable and is probably just the first of many. As long as a robust antivirus solution is not implemented, hackers will continue to victimize your business.
How Do I Protect Myself From DDoS Attacks?
There are some strategies you can implement right now to protect yourself from DDoS attacks. Check out some of them below:
Invest in bandwidth
Probably the easiest way to protect yourself from DDoS attacks is to make sure that there is enough bandwidth in your company's connection to the internet. With a high bandwidth to handle larger traffic requests, it is possible to prevent attacks on a small scale.
Have a backup connection
Maintain a backup connection with a separate set of IP addresses for your critical users. This gives your business an alternate path if the primary circuit is overloaded with malicious requests.
Learn to identify an attack
If you run your own servers, you should be able to identify that you are under attack. After all, the sooner you realize there are problems with your website, the sooner you can resolve them.
Familiarize yourself with the analysis of incoming traffic on your networks, so you can easily spot anomalies. Sharp spikes or a sudden surge in visitors are signs of the start of a DDoS attack.
Purchase intrusion detection systems
Install an intrusion detection system. Most of them have solutions to protect their systems in case of DDoS attacks, such as connection verification, which prevents certain requests from reaching their pages and networks.
Use a remote DDoS protection service
Use a remote DDoS protection service. Several vendors offer the feature and they have prevention devices specifically designed to detect and stop ongoing DDoS attacks.
How Does DDoS Remote Protection Work?
Remote proxy protection provides an extra layer to prevent hackers from reaching your network or services. This type of solution hides your real IP and sends all traffic that reaches your website through a mitigation network. The whole process takes place without your visitors noticing and without compromising the responsiveness of your page.
Remote protection is a layered approach to proactive and reactive security. Your proxy provider continually monitors the security of the site and identifies risks before they become a reality. The solutions may or may not be based on the cloud and have firewalls and intrusion prevention systems that mitigate the main threats, be they volumetric attacks or brute force invasion attempts.
One of the biggest reasons for choosing the alternative is that DDoS remote protection increases both the security and the performance of your HTTP applications. In addition, the cost-benefit ratio and the convenience of the preventive solution help to protect your business and prevent unforeseen events.
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