DDoS Attacks: What Every Enterprise Business Needs to Know

For an enterprise business, internet connectivity supports far more than a public website. It may power ecommerce, cloud applications, remote offices, customer portals, communications and essential business operations.

A distributed denial-of-service—or DDoS—attack targets that dependence. By overwhelming a network, server or application with malicious traffic, an attacker can slow performance dramatically or make online resources completely unavailable to legitimate users.

The attack may not steal data or breach a system to cause significant damage. Sometimes, simply keeping customers and employees out is enough.

How a DDoS Attack Works

A DDoS attack typically uses a network of compromised computers, servers or internet-connected devices known as a botnet. The attacker directs those devices to send an enormous volume of traffic or requests toward a target simultaneously.

Because the traffic comes from many sources, blocking a single address won’t stop it. And because some malicious activity may resemble legitimate traffic, separating real users from the attack can be difficult without specialized detection and mitigation capabilities.

DDoS attacks generally fall into three categories:

• Volumetric attacks consume available bandwidth by flooding the target with traffic.
• Protocol attacks exploit weaknesses in network protocols or exhaust the resources of firewalls, load balancers and servers.
• Application-layer attacks target specific services or functions, such as repeatedly requesting a resource-intensive webpage.

Attackers may combine techniques or change tactics while an attack is underway.

How DDoS Attacks Can Affect Your Business

An unavailable website is the most visible consequence, but the operational impact can extend much further. A successful DDoS attack may interrupt transactions, prevent employees from accessing cloud-based tools, overwhelm customer service teams and disrupt communications among locations.

It can also damage customer confidence and create financial losses that continue after service is restored. In some cases, an attack may serve as a distraction while criminals attempt another form of intrusion elsewhere in the environment. This makes rapid detection and a coordinated response especially important.

Preparing for a DDoS Attack

DDoS attacks cannot always be prevented from beginning, but businesses can take steps to reduce their impact.

1. Identify critical services. Determine which websites, applications, locations and network connections would create the greatest disruption if they became unavailable.
2. Establish normal traffic patterns. Understanding typical usage can make unusual spikes and other warning signs easier to recognize.
3. Build redundancy. Distributed infrastructure, backup connections and failover capabilities can help reduce reliance on a single point of failure.
4. Keep systems current. Updated network equipment, operating systems and applications can reduce vulnerabilities attackers may attempt to exploit.
5. Create a response plan. Define responsibilities, escalation procedures, internal communications and customer-notification processes before an incident occurs.
6. Test the plan. Tabletop exercises can reveal gaps while there is still time to address them.

Firewalls and on-site security tools remain important, but they may not be able to absorb an attack that overwhelms the organization’s available bandwidth. By the time malicious traffic reaches the business network, the connection may already be saturated.

Add Protection at the Network Level

A DDoS mitigation service can monitor internet traffic for signs of an attack. When suspicious activity is detected, a DDoS mitigation service can help identify and filter malicious traffic while allowing legitimate traffic to continue toward its destination.

Sparklight DDoS Mitigation provides an additional layer of protection for enterprise networks by helping detect and mitigate malicious traffic that could disrupt critical operations. Rather than relying solely on an internal team to recognize and respond to an attack, businesses gain access to network-level capabilities designed specifically for this type of threat.

The appropriate solution may depend on an organization’s connectivity, applications, traffic patterns and tolerance for downtime. A thorough risk assessment can help determine the necessary level of protection.

Make Resilience Part of the Network Strategy

DDoS attacks turn an organization’s connectivity into a potential pressure point. For an enterprise that depends on always-available systems, waiting until traffic begins to surge is not much of a strategy.

A combination of resilient infrastructure, a tested response plan and dedicated mitigation can help keep legitimate users connected—even when someone is trying very hard to prevent it.

To learn more about Sparklight DDoS Protection, click here.