The term DDoS attack is fairly well known in the business arena today. Defining these cyber hazards can be tricky. Nevertheless, the impact they can have on your business operations can be devastating.

DDoS Attacks

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks disrupt services such as access to a website, an internet service provider (ISP), an online stock market and so on.

All online entities are vulnerable to these hazards. The hacker floods the target service with a high volume of false traffic through multiple machines. The server resources get overloaded and the site becomes inaccessible.

DDoS attacks can differ greatly in terms of type and scale. Some can be perpetrated with just one request per second. Automation is crucial while deploying them.

Differentiating between Valid Traffic and a DDoS Attack

A major challenge involves telling the difference between DDoS attacks and a really good volume of genuine traffic. High volumes of valid requests often bring down websites, but the downtime tends to be short and operations are quickly restored.

But it’s not always that straightforward. Consider this scenario. An online retailer hires a black-hat hacker to inconspicuously deny people access to competitor websites. The hacker can launch a DDoS attack at specific intervals throughout the day till customers are dissatisfied with how slow the competitor’s website is. The hacker’s server could deploy 500 hits per day without raising alarms, disrupting access to the site for a few seconds from time to time. Even DDoS attacks that are less intense than this can cause severe damage to the organization’s business and reputation.

Analytic tools can also be used to detect specific traffic sources requesting certain data sets even after the Time to Live (TTL) for the website has expired.

Protecting Against a DDoS Attack

Keeping a tab on website activity

Closely monitor your network traffic to detect any abnormal or unusual activity, for instance, a spike in network traffic.

Upgrade Website Capacity

By increasing your website’s capacity you can seamlessly handle the extra load and resolve dips in website performance during traffic spikes.

Use a Website Security Provider

Many companies also use the services of third party website security vendors to deal decisively with these threats.

Web Application Firewall

Many web application firewalls come with built in DDoS mitigation features that automatically deny entry to suspicious traffic without interfering with genuine requests. This in turn drastically improves the website’s performance.