TABLE OF CONTENT:
Introduction:
What is a DDoS attack?
What are the types of DDoS attacks?
- Volumetric attacks
- Protocol attacks
- Application layer attacks
What happens in a DDoS attack?
What are the effects of DDoS attack?
- Customer experience
- Reputation
- Financial value
- Repair and rebuild
What are the ways of preventing DDoS attacks?
- Implement sound Network monitoring practices
- Practicing basic security techniques
- Setup basic traffic thresholds
- Implement sound Network monitoring practices
- Practicing basic security techniques
- Setup basic traffic thresholds
- Keeping your security infrastructure up to date
- Be ready with DDoS response battle plan
- Ensure efficient server capacity
- Explore cloud-based DDoS protection solutions
- Use CDN
- Get professional DDoS prevention support
Conclusion
Closing
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Introduction
It is necessary for every business to prevent themselves from DDoS attacks. These types of attacks directly shut down the websites that affect your business thoroughly. DDoS attacks corrupts network by attacking a particular node that results in blocking traffic to your website also contains a huge risk of losing confidential data. You may be thinking what is the use of this? Hackers own benefits by cyber extortion demanding huge ransom in exchange of rectifying the attack or for the confidential data which is stolen from your website. In this article, we will learn about how we can prevent ourselves from DDos attacks. Before digging deeper into the concepts let us know what DDos attack actually is?
What is a DDoS attack?
DDoS attack can be compared to a traffic jam on a highway if many cars intercept the way, it leads to a traffic jam which is the same case in DDoS attacks. Your network is filled with malicious traffic that can disturb your normal operations.
Usually the targeted web server is filled with messages, requests and fake packets that outnumber your bandwidth and slows down your server. It may also lead to your server crashing or becoming unavailable for the users.
If the targeted server is a critical part of your business, it brings down your entire Network and infrastructure that can lead your business to a serious halt. The threat of your website going down increases, during this type of attack your website can also be launched with other kinds of attack that can bring some serious consequences to your business.
Usually this type of traffic comes through malware and botnets. As your business grows, more devices are connected to your network which can make it easy to launch these sorts of attacks.
What are the types of DDoS attacks?
The types of DDoS attacks which are commonly used are as follows,
- Volumetric attacks
It is a very common type of DDoS attack that fills your network with unwanted traffic and uses huge amounts of fake data that overwhelm your bandwidth causing any website to crash or slow down. While your website is busy handling this traffic the organic or genuine traffic is not able to pass through.
The attackers use Datagram Protocol(UDP) and Internet Control Message Protocol(ICMP) to flood your network, preventing legitimate users from accessing your website services. The hackers disrupt your services by initiating a massive amount of traffic from invalid IP addresses that also helps them avoid being caught after the attack.
- Protocol attacks
Protocol attacks are quite dangerous because your application Firewall is compromised during a protocol attack. Protocol attacks consume your server resources and attack the areas responsible for verifying your connections and send slow pings and partial packets that end up in overloading your memory buffer and crashing the whole system.
Most common type of protocol attack is SYN flood attack. In this kind of attack the client sends a synchronized (SYN) packet to the server which the server responds back to the client with ACK (acknowledge) and then the client is supposed to respond with an ACK packet, but doesn’t, and the server keeps on waiting for the response that uses up all its resources.
- Application layer attacks
Application layer attacks mainly focus on your web traffic and can be executed over HTTP, HTTPS, DNS or SMTP. They act as a hurdle and attack vulnerabilities that prevent your content from delivering the user.
The reason that makes application layer attacks difficult to overcome or track is because, they use fewer resources and sometimes can be executed over just a single machine.
There is even a possibility that hackers may combine all the three attacks to launch a multilingual attack that can completely destroy your server.
What happens in a DDoS attack?
DDoS attacks can cause havoc and damage to your web property and your business very easily. This attack occurs when thousands of connections that a server cannot handle are sent to your network through internet, DNS, firewall and web. They Attack the vulnerabilities of your website and that can open up a possibility that your website may be infected with Malware or Trojan virus. DDOS attacks are used to carry out theft or destroy an organization and attack many networks of a company at a single time to carry out the task successfully.
What are the effects of DDoS attack?
This sort of attacks can greatly damage your business reputation and can even lead your website to be blacklisted. The effects of DDoS attacks are,
- Customer experience
Website under attack can greatly affect the customer experience as the downtime of the website increases, the User experience of the website is affected, as well as repairing and building the website again to uptime drains more time which impact your User experience as well as customer experience greatly.
- Reputation
A website which is attacked can greatly impact your reputation, as no customer wants to get services from a hacked website where their data is in danger of being stolen.
- Financial value
The financial value of your website is decreased and you need to pay for maintenance and rebuilding your website with all the features as well as paying more security.
- Repair and rebuild
You need to repair and rebuild your website after the attack takes place to still continue working with your website and you have to make it more secure to ensuring the customers that their data is safe in your hands.
What are the ways of preventing DDoS attacks?
It requires a lot of patience, human Intelligence and constant monitoring for prevention of DDoS attacks. You need to understand that your network and the changes that may occur during a cyber-attack to prevent your website from getting attacked. A multi layered Cloud Security that is developed by highly experienced professionals can also offer you the best protection for your website from DDoS attacks. Here are some of the ways through which you can prevent your website from DDOS attacks,
- Implement sound Network monitoring practices
The very first step of protecting yourself from a threat is to knowing more about the threat. This method means monitoring and visualizing your network through real time monitoring and knowing the bandwidth of the traffic that enters your website and be notified if there are any abnormalities in the traffic.
Sound and Network monitoring practices are best in protecting your website from DDoS attacks because these attacks leave visual traces or clues which are not familiar with your network behavior, resulting in knowing any changes in your network.
- Practicing basic security techniques
You should practice some basic security techniques for ensuring a basic level of security from DDoS threats. These practices include using strong password or monitoring your website and not neglecting any basic change in your website which can further be a complex threat for your site.
- Setup basic traffic thresholds
You can partially manage to prevent your website from DDoS attack. This includes limiting your traffic with certain frequencies or thresh-holding the limits off the router can greatly help in DDoS attacks.
- Keeping your security infrastructure up to date
Your network can be a strong point as well as a weak point for your website. For protecting the Legacy of your website and see to it your website isn’t compromised you should have regular updates of your security infrastructure.
Updating and keeping a backup of your system and updating your application firewalls can greatly help in making your connection secure. In addition, if you are connected with your ISP or hosting provider you can implement advanced protection by consulting them that can be a better idea for protection of your website.
- Be ready with DDoS response battle plan
Thinking of a response after being hit by an attack would be too late to think about it.
Response plan should really include,
- Check list of the tools that you would be requiring for advanced threat detection and filtering out your hardware and software.
- You need a team with clearly defined roles to carry out the detection of the attack.
- You need protocols through which you can notify the one that can prevent the attack from continuing further.
- You need a strategy and a communication plan for contacting your internal and external stakeholders in real time if any attack takes place.
- Ensure efficient server capacity
One of the methods of attacking your site is overwhelming your network with the traffic that exceeds your bandwidth. Having enough server capacity cannot prevent the attack from happening but can give you some extra time to prepare for a strategy to counter the attack if you have more capacity for traffic in your site and your bandwidth capacity is more. If your bandwidth handles spikes and overwhelming traffic for more minutes it gives you time to counter the attack.
- Explore cloud-based DDoS protection solutions
It is wise to choose cloud solutions as a solution strategy for prevention from DDoS attacks. As compared to private networks cloud provides you with more bandwidth. Cloud data-center can absorb and detect malicious traffic and disperse them into blank areas preventing them from reaching your website.
- Use CDN
Using CDN cannot greatly help in preventing your website from this sort of attacks but the overloading data are equally shared across various geographical distributed services which may slow down your website but it is still functional preventing your website from crashing and protecting your website from Greater damage.
- Get professional DDoS prevention support
Even if it costs you some dime it is better to contact professionals without hesitation. Professionals can help protecting your web property from any kind of attack and monitor the performance of a website and distribute your traffic equally over a number of servers that keeps the performance of your website going even under attack and gives you time to come up with the counter strategy how to save your website from the attack, save your data and any confidential information over the website.
Conclusion
Therefore, these are the threats that can destroy your website or bring a bad name to your website which makes security an essential factor for the betterment of your business. You need to have prevention from DDOS attacks. As we discussed in this article how dangerous these attacks can be and how to recover from them, there is a need for security and prevention from DDoS attacks.
Closing
So these are the threats from DDoS you need to be aware of and IntCIS provides you with the best services and prevention from attackers or threat to your website, ensuring a safe environment.
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