The cybersecurity threat is an imminent challenge facing businesses globally and it is important for SMBs from Malaysia too to ensure robust cybersecurity systems in place for their business information systems.
One of the common and intrinsic cybersecurity threats facing businesses is DDoS attacks.
Technically, the DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack is a kind of cyberattack having a non-intrusive attack targeting the websites or web applications to a slowdown by flooding the network servers.
Servers get exhausted to a resource-intensive endpoint, and even with limited traffic, the attack gets succeeds at times.
What is DDOS Attacks (Distributed Denial of Service)
DDoS attacks in general are threats imminent to the sites with more traffic or vulnerable traffic conditions.
At times, the attacks are so intense wherein in millions of requests per second flood the servers, and genuine request from the nodes gets interrupted for service.
In the security landscape, handling DDoS protection and prevention is a complex and challenging system for businesses.
To understand the preventive measures essential for DDoS protection, it is important to know various types of DDoS challenges and the DDoS effects.
Volumetric
This is one of the most common kinds of DDoS attacks attacking websites. In this form of DDoS attacks, the websites receive unusual traffic into the website network.
The volumes of requests are so high that the servers become unresponsive. This disrupts the complete business and traffic to the website.
Imagine an airline site or an eCommerce store or public services website getting millions of requests per second, and it hits the genuine traffic and disruption.
Now one can judge what is DDoS attacks intended for and the need for DDoS protection.
Protocol Impacts
Though not often, these kinds of attacks are known to disrupt data transfers. In general, this type of attack is significant over data transmission protocols, wherein TCP/IP connections are disrupted by sending a flood of packets.
Thus, in the stream, genuine data transfer packets get hampered and the wait for the connections do not take place, resulting in significant DDoS effects.
Related: What is TCP/IP connections
Application Attacks
The other set of attacks is targeting specific applications and intends to harm the transactions for the attacks. Imagine a scenario of a banking specific or service from application services getting interrupted, it can be a complex issue for businesses.
Hence, focusing on the above-mentioned types of attacks, the following are some of the key steps which can be resourceful for businesses to ensure DDoS effects do not impact the business.
Understanding and Securing the Network’s traffic
Based on the nature of business, there is a set pattern for each website as average, peak, or non-peak traffic.
The network administrators or the monitoring teams need to have some screening set-up to monitor the network traffic to the prevention of DDoS attacks.
If there is any unusual traffic to the website happening, activating the backup and disaster prevention and recovery plans is important to avoid what is called DDoS attacks.
Deploying DDoS Response Plans
One of the critical steps for the prevention of DDoS attacks in the systems is to have robust security solutions in place.
Having a good WAF (Web Application Firewall) system in place for filtering network requests, screening them, and monitoring the traffic is important.
A strong WAF deployed for the process can protect the systems by preventing any unusual traffic from the sources from being terminated at the firewall stage, and do not allow them to the server levels.
In addition to developing a WAF security layer, the other checklist solutions are to train the response teams, have backup servers for activation ready, communication plan in place for stakeholders.
By having such plans and measures in place, the DDoS effects on the website can be minimized, and business continuity can be planned.
Related: What is a WAF (Web Application Firewall)
Distributed Service Architecture
In targeted DDoS attacks, when the complete application is on one server or the holistic set of services are offered from one server, it is easier for attackers to launch DDoS attacks.
However, in a resilient server environment, the preventive steps for DDoS attacks are in place.
The data centers are not the same for hosting the application, and different networks are used for offering distinctive services of the application. The scope for hampering the traffic to the site shall be minimized.
In such an application architecture, even if one segment of the services is under attack, the other services are active, and the disruption shall be limited.
Also, for hackers to breach through multiple networks and WAF systems can be a complex task. This is one strategic solution toward preventing DDoS attacks and having DDOS protection.
Good Cybersecurity Practices
Periodical audits of the server security, network security, upgrade of system defenders, and managing the vulnerability issues if any in the application and network security layers are paramount for DDoS protection.
Alongside the scalability to cater to huge volumes of traffic to the website, the admin teams must ensure any chances of DDoS attack conditions are prevented effectively, and there is a complete ecosystem in place for managing DDoS protection.
Related: Alert! 15 Signs Your Business Under Cyber Attack
Counter the process
The DDoS effect is more about choking the bandwidth and making genuine requests or traffic to the sites getting affected.
However, if there is a strategic plan for the backup of bandwidth and the scope for managing huge traffic with flexible bandwidth consumption, the risk is mitigated to an extent.
The objective of such a process is to buy time before it’s late to prevent the DDoS attack and its DDoS effects.
Cloud Computing Migration
The other strategic approach for the problem is to move to cloud computing from the conventional server hosting approach.
In the cloud hosting models, as the compliance norms are high, and the website is hosted from multiple locations, even in the success of the DDoS attack, the impact on the actual traffic can be less.
The alternative servers will start addressing the genuine requests, and the business continuity is in place.
To know more about the DDoS attacks, the challenges, and DDoS effects, to understand the dynamics of outsourced cybersecurity, reach out to our expert team Exabytes Malaysia for more details.
Related Products:
Cloudflare: Cloudflare is the global leader in CDN. It offers web optimization and has multiple firewall securities features that protects you from DDoS attack.
Sucuri Website Security: DoS / DDoS attacks are easy to employ and highly effective in causing your website long downtimes and bandwidth bills. Sucuri Web Application Firewall (WAF) prevents these types of attacks before they occur.
