How to Prevent DDoS Attacks? 10 Best Practices

DDoS attacks allow malicious intruders to flood a network or server with fabricated traffic, causing an overwhelming strain on resources and disrupting connectivity. As a result, the system cannot handle legitimate user requests, leading to service unavailability, extended downtime, financial losses, and customer dissatisfaction. To help you protect from DDoS attacks, this blog includes effective strategies for businesses to proactively defend against DDoS attacks and maintain a competitive edge over potential hackers. The following practices outlined below aim to mitigate the impact of such attacks and facilitate DDoS prevention techniques in the face of an attempted breach.

DDoS Attack 101

A Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack is a cybercrime where an assailant overwhelms a server by flooding it with a substantial volume of internet traffic. This malicious activity hinders legitimate users from accessing online services and websites.

DDoS attacks are driven by diverse motivations, drawing the attention of various individuals and organizations. Some attackers may engage in such actions due to personal grievances, hacktivism, or the desire to exploit cybersecurity weaknesses for amusement or to express disapproval.

The most common types of DDoS attacks are as follows:

• Volumetric DDoS attacks: Volumetric DDoS attacks involve overwhelming a target with a large volume of traffic, typically by flooding an online application with simultaneous requests from multiple sources. Botnets, compromised networks of computers, are often used to carry out these attacks. Attackers exploit botnets to coordinate continuous requests, depleting the target’s resources and causing disruption. Recently, attackers have extended their objectives beyond disruption, using DDoS attacks for extortion and as a distraction to carry out activities like data theft and malware installation.
• Application-layer DDoS attacks: Application-layer attacks pose significant risks to organizations, as they can result in data theft, network downtime, business disruption, and financial extortion. These attacks, including DDoS attacks, SYN flood attacks, SQL injections, and cross-site scripting, are constantly evolving and growing in complexity. To effectively defend against these threats, organizations require adaptive cybersecurity solutions that can dynamically counter emerging attack techniques while minimizing administrative overhead.
• Protocol DDoS attacks: Protocol attacks, also known as state-exhaustion attacks, disrupt services by excessively consuming server resources and network equipment resources such as firewalls and load balancers.

How to Stop DDoS Attacks?

We have shortlisted some of our tried and tested tips and techniques for preventing DDoS attacks:

Increase Bandwidth Capacity

Consider scaling up your network’s bandwidth to alleviate the impact of DDoS attacks. By expanding your capacity, your organization can better handle larger volumes of traffic. However, you may need additional solutions against increasingly sophisticated volumetric DDoS attacks.

Understand Your Network’s Traffic Patterns

Gain insight into the typical Internet traffic patterns within your organization’s infrastructure. This knowledge will establish a baseline, identifying unusual activity that may indicate a DDoS attack.

Enhance Network Resilience

Implement measures to strengthen your network’s resilience against DDoS attacks. Beyond relying solely on firewalls, diversify your data centers across different networks, distribute them in separate physical locations, utilize multiple data centers, and optimize network configurations to prevent traffic bottlenecks.

Improve Your Network Security

Educate and encourage users to adopt best security practices, such as regularly changing passwords, employing secure authentication methods, and being vigilant against phishing attacks. By minimizing user errors, your organization can improve overall security even in an attack.

Utilize Anti-DDoS Hardware and Software

Leverage dedicated hardware and software solutions to defend against and mitigate DDoS attacks. These products provide specialized protection against various types of attacks. Additionally, harden your IT infrastructure by adjusting settings, removing unused ports, and enabling timeouts for partially open connections.

Develop a DDoS Response Plan

Create a comprehensive plan in advance to effectively respond to a potential DDoS attack. Consider the complexity of your infrastructure and include elements such as a systems checklist, a trained response team, clear notification and escalation procedures, a list of internal and external contacts to inform about the attack, and a communication plan for stakeholders like customers or vendors.

Embrace Cloud Services

While it cannot eliminate DDoS attacks, migrating to the cloud can help mitigate their impact. Cloud resources typically offer increased bandwidth compared to on-premise infrastructure, and the distributed nature of the cloud ensures servers are geographically dispersed.

Recognize the Symptoms of an Attack

Familiarize yourself with the signs that may indicate a DDoS attack, such as sudden network slowdowns, website shutdowns, a surge in spam, decreased performance, high demand on a specific page or endpoint, outages or crashes, poor connectivity, or any abnormal traffic originating from a single IP address.

Continuously Monitor for Unusual Activity

Maintain ongoing network monitoring to detect any signs of abnormal traffic or suspicious activity. Real-time monitoring allows for swift detection of a DDoS attack, enabling prompt action to mitigate its impact.

Consider Outsourcing DDoS Protection

Explore options for outsourcing DDoS protection through specialized service providers. These companies can offer expertise in rapidly scaling resources to respond to attacks, fortifying defenses, and mitigating the impact of ongoing attacks.

How Mobiz Offers Robust Solutions to DDoS Attacks

Cyber attackers consistently seek out the most vulnerable aspects of an organization, system, or network. Hence, DDoS attack prevention is crucial for businesses of all sizes. To effectively monitor your internet traffic, it is best to utilize cybersecurity services that provide continuous network monitoring, offering an external perspective on your company’s security. At Mobiz, our team of highly skilled experts helps organizations establish all levels of corporate network security and train employees on how to handle DDoS attacks.

Look no further and sign up for our services today to safeguard your business against DDoS threats!

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a DDoS prevention system?

A DDoS prevention system is a dedicated security solution crafted to detect, mitigate, and prevent attacks targeting networks, servers, or applications. This system employs various advanced techniques and mechanisms to accurately identify and filter out malicious traffic, ensuring the uninterrupted availability and integrity of online services.

Why is DDoS prevention important?

DDoS prevention is crucial for maintaining the continuous availability of services, protecting an organization’s reputation, and minimizing financial losses associated with downtime. It also serves to safeguard sensitive data and intellectual property, ensure compliance with regulations, and provide a competitive edge by showcasing reliability and security to customers. In essence, DDoS prevention is an essential element of comprehensive cybersecurity strategies.