How to prepare your business against the rising threat of DDOS attacks

Cyber security has been a hot topic these past few years, as the number of threats continues to rise; especially for small and medium sized enterprises. DDOS attacks are among some of the most damaging to your business’ cyber security infrastructure, and so ensuring that your organisation is one step ahead when it comes to this type of threat is vital.

What exactly is a DDOS attack?

Essentially, they are attacks used by hackers to flood a network, service or server with fake traffic, which can completely paralyse systems. A ‘botnet’ is one of the most common choices for a DDOS attack. This is a linked network of malware-infected computers that can send an excessive number of requests to an IP address or website. The consequences of this kind of attack are that services and networks become unavailable to genuine customers and there may be a long period of downtime while the issue is resolved, as well as creating problems with customer relationships and significant lost revenue. 15% of DDOS attacks can keep services unavailable for a whole month while 60% last less than a day.

How can you prepare your business against a DDOS threat?

● Have a DDOS response plan in place – This should include clear instructions on how everyone in the business should respond, the way that the organisation is going to maintain continuity, key individuals with responsibility, as well as important tools to use.
● Train your team to spot the signs – The earlier you spot the signs of a DDOS attack, the easier it will be to do something about it. Some of these signs include slow performance, problems with connectivity, high demand for a single page or obvious crashes.
● Invest in network security – A DDOS attack will only work if a hacker has enough time to build up an overwhelming number of requests. Optimum network security can include firewalls and intrusion detection, antivirus software, endpoint security and network segmentation.
● Establish server redundancy – It’s challenging for a hacker to attack a large number of servers at the same time. So, if you have server redundancy, with servers hosted at data centres and colocation facilities in different locations, if one server is attacked others remain unaffected and can take up the slack.
● Monitor your network traffic – Continuous traffic monitoring will produce a red flag if something seems to be wrong and ensure that attacks are automatically detected early, even if they happen outside of normal office hours.
● Leverage the cloud – One of the major advantages of the cloud is that it’s an environment that can handle DDOS attacks with ease. Outsource your DDOS prevention to a cloud services provider for the optimum benefits.
DDOS attacks are a growing threat for businesses today.

Here at S.A.D.S IT, we can provide the support and service for any organisation looking to upgrade their IT/cyber infrastructure to ensure the best possible protection when it comes to cyber security. To find out about the services we offer, please visit our ‘IT Security’ page on our website for more information.

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