Kaila Uli’s sunglasses business was booming, and she was just feeling like her entrepreneurial dreams were coming true when she was hit by a relentless distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. A slew of bots was overwhelming her site, making it impossible for her real customers to make any purchases.
Four years later, Uli is still thriving in the business world, but sadly, her sunglasses company never recovered from the incident. Stories like these are all too common, so today we’re taking a closer look at DDoS attacks—what they are, how they can harm your business, and what you can do to stay safe.
What Are DDoS Attacks?
In a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, hackers attempt to overwhelm servers, websites, or networks by sending huge waves of traffic. This surge in requests disables networks, causing them to shut down and making it impossible to perform services for legitimate users.
DDoS ploys often employ sophisticated hacking techniques, such as botnets, which are networks of compromised devices that can be controlled by hackers remotely. These botnets can include thousands or even millions of devices, making it extremely difficult to identify and eradicate the core of the threat.
Most attacks are relatively quick, ending in just a few minutes, but some may last days or even weeks if proper measures aren’t taken to combat them.
What Are Their Effects?
DDoS attacks can have serious effects on businesses of all sizes and industries, including financial losses, operational disruptions, exposure of security gaps, and lost confidence among clients. Here’s a look at some of the most commonly targeted industries and what DDoS incidents mean for them:
- Gaming: About 49% of DDoS attacks target gaming servers, making it impossible to play games, leading to customer dissatisfaction and subscription cancellations, and ultimately damaging the company’s revenue and reputation.
- Technology: DDoS incidents can paralyze technology companies by overwhelming servers, disrupting software platforms, and causing critical delays in product development and launches. These interruptions can cause huge issues in lost sales and customer trust.
- Financial: DDoS ploys can block access to online banking services, delay transactions, and expose vulnerabilities in security infrastructures. This can lead to significant financial losses, damage customer confidence, and cause compliance complications.
- E-commerce: By making websites or applications inaccessible, DDoS attacks result in lost sales during critical times, decreased user engagement, and potential long-term distrust from customers.
- Healthcare: DDoS attempts may block access to critical patient data, shut down appointment scheduling systems, and otherwise disrupt care, putting patients at risk and harming the organization’s credibility.
- Government: Attacks targeting government websites can hinder public access to essential services, disrupt communication channels, and potentially expose sensitive information, causing public unrest and possibly leading to huge losses in finances or data.
What Was the Azure DDoS Attack of 2021?
Microsoft is constantly working to combat DDoS attacks targeted at its clients who use Azure. In November of 2021, they were faced with what was considered the largest DDoS incident ever recorded at the time.
The attack lasted only 15 minutes, but it originated from around 10,000 sources in over 10 countries. The customer’s servers were hit with 3.47 terabits (over 430 gigabytes) of data per second, which was around 340 million smaller pieces of data (aka packets) per second.
The scale of this attack served as a reminder that DDoS techniques are becoming more sophisticated, and the risks are becoming greater.
How Can I Prevent a DDoS Attack?
You may never be hit by such a large-scale attack at the Azure incident, but even lower-profile attacks can have devastating effects on your business. By partnering with a skilled managed IT provider who offers personalized cybersecurity services, you can effectively manage DDoS risks. Let’s take a look at a few key strategies you can work together to employ:
Risk Assessment
Your IT team can conduct regular risk assessments to identify vulnerabilities in your systems that could be exploited during a DDoS attack. With this proactive approach, you can plan ahead and strengthen your defenses.
24/7 Network Monitoring
Continuous monitoring helps teams identify signs of DDoS attempts, such as sudden and unexpected surges in web traffic, slow network performance, and delayed website load times, early on, allowing you to react quickly and minimize their effects.
Traffic Filtering
Implementing traffic filtering systems allows legitimate traffic to access your site while blocking malicious traffic, making it more difficult to properly execute a DDoS attack.
Rate Limiting
By setting limits on the number of requests a server can process within a specific timeframe, rate limiting helps to prevent servers from being overwhelmed by excessive traffic and creates a roadblock for hackers hoping to overload your systems.
Web Application Firewalls (WAFs)
WAFs add an extra layer of protection by filtering and monitoring HTTP traffic to and from a web application, effectively blocking malicious or overwhelming requests.
Incident Response Plan (IRP)
Establishing a DDoS-specific incident response plan ensures that, if something does slip through, your team will have a coordinated approach to eradicating threats, minimizing downtime, and restoring operations quickly.
Mitigate the Risk with AIS
Our team has spent years learning the ins and outs of evolving cyber threats so we can keep your organization safe. With our proactive strategies and unbeatable expertise on your side, you can effectively avoid dangerous attacks and preserve your productivity. Schedule a meeting with one of our techs to learn more about our approach to cybersecurity and see if it’s right for you.