A Distributed Denial-of-Service Attack, also known as a DDoS attack, is a cyber attack that seeks to make a network resource, like your website, unavailable to users. DDoS attacks use up all of the network bandwidth a company should be spending on legitimate users to prevent the online business from operating as usual. Preventing legitimate users and customers from accessing your website can be extremely damaging.
DDoS attacks can harm your company’s reputation and negatively impact site revenue by cutting off online purchases. Also, they can be extremely costly to remedy. Learn how you can prevent DDoS attacks with Secure Web Accelerator powered by Cloudflare.
How are DDoS Attacks Used Today?
DDoS attacks are used in multiple ways. Cybercriminals and competitors use DDoS attacks to strategically harm a business or steal information. Script kiddies may use DDoS to cause havoc (with or without reason), while activists argue that DDoS attacks are a form of free speech. They have a point. If you think about it, DDoS attacks could be considered a form of protest in the digital age. Similar to how protesters stand in front of a building to make a statement and prevent access to a building, DDoS attacks deny access to a company’s website. However, unlike protesting, DDoS attacks are illegal. But that doesn’t stop them from happening.
3 Likely Targets of a DDoS Attack
Government agencies are common targets for DDoS attacks.
Script kiddies and gaming often go hand-and-hand. Gaming companies are often attacked by their own users.
DDoS attacks can be used as a distraction. While the business is trying to manage the DDoS attack, the perpetrator goes after their true objective of stealing information and extorting the business.
How to Prevent a DDoS Attack
There are preventative measures you can take to avoid becoming the next victim of a DDoS attack. For example, beefing up your servers so that they can handle more traffic and bandwidth can help. However, it can also be expensive. If your company uses cloud hosting, you may be able to easily ramp up your bandwidth. If you don’t, there are many companies that provide DDoS mitigation services. One of the largest DDoS mitigation providers on the market is Cloudflare. Cloudflare has a network of servers around the world, large enough to protect against the strongest recorded DDoS attacks.
How Does Cloudflare Prevent DDoS Attacks?
You can add Secure Web Accelerator powered by Cloudflare to your domains as an additional layer of protection. Cloudflare is the middleman between your server and the rest of the Internet. Similar to a water filtration system, Cloudflare intercepts web traffic to ensure only clean requests are coming through. Cloudflare will automatically filter out malicious requests before they can even reach your website.
Cloudflare’s global network spans across many servers. Each server checks for various types of DDoS attacks and filters requests accordingly. Some cyber attacks are more challenging to detect than others, which is why it is difficult for companies to take on attacks involving multiple types of DDoS themselves. Cloudflare uses machine learning to analyze and detect signs of malic.ious intent on all of the Internet traffic that passes through them.
John Graham-Cumming, Chief Technology Officer at Cloudflare, describes it best,
“ Because of the scale of a cloud-first network — with such a large number of users using Cloudflare, traffic coming through us — we can actually look for anomalous behavior on our network, which would be indication of some type of attack, and then we can use that to protect other users.”
Cloudflare oversees over 11M HTTP requests a second—which gives them a great deal of insight to learn from.
Always Prepare for the Worst
The best way to prepare for a DDoS attack is to have an emergency plan in place. Some things you can do to ensure your company is prepared in the event a DDoS attack occurs:
Prepare a company statement that would be released to the public in the event of an attack.
Have a budget in place. Every minute of a DDoS attack will cost your company revenue. Investing in DDoS protection services is cheaper than resolving an attack.
Follow Cloudflare’s recommended security strategies.
Secure Web Accelerator
Secure Web Accelerator powered by Cloudflare protects you from DDoS attacks, abusive bots, and other common cyber attacks with one-click installation. Starting at less than $1/month.