A DDoS or Distributed Denial of Service is an attack where multiple connected online devices(Botnets) generates the fake traffic at the website and where the server is bombarded with the multiple requests or data making the services on server inaccessible. The primary goal of the DDoS attack is preventing anyone from using the website.
The chances of being targeted by a DDoS attack are very high these days, and the attempts made by the attackers are very numerous. Therefore your website and business applications should be appropriately secured to reduce the risk of being prone to these attacks. A DDoS attack aims to affect a server, service or an infrastructure making them unavailable by overloading the bandwidth, resources and exploiting software.
There are three ways of making a website, server or infrastructure unavailable.
- Bandwidth: This type of attack consists of saturating the server’s network and making it impossible to reach.
- Resources: This type of attack consists of depleting the server’s resources which makes it impossible to process the request made for the server.
- Exploitation of software: This type of attack targets a particular software and erupts it while making the machine unavailable and out of control.
How to protect your server for DDoS Attacks?
Every reliable hosting provider must ensure that the servers are protected against the DDoS attacks. However, you should also ensure that the several security measures are in place to ensure that the server is secured and not prone to these types of attacks. Firewalls must be provided to restrict the malicious traffic automatically from the network. You should analyze time to time sudden traffic spikes and monitor the traffic carefully. Your server should only receive clean traffic, as it usually would.
Apart from monitoring your website traffic, you should also keep a check on the connected devices. Hackers find their way through the connected devices to disrupt the services of a website/brand. Gauging the connected devices will help you monitoring by verification and reduce the risk of DDoS attack.
The other of keeping your website secure from the DDoS attack is blocking the spoofed IP address. Prevention of IP address forgery leads to these DDoS attacks, and you can stop that creating an access control list (ACL) to deny all inbound traffic with particular source IP. You can also set up an IP verification system before allowing an IP to access the server. You can also tweak the settings of the routers and switches to block the packets coming from outside your network.
You have to be vigilant in installing patches and updates frequently on your server. Installing updates on an open source platform like WordPress frequently mitigate the risk of attack because the potential security loophole is filled with an update. There you should install the update as soon as it is available for the system. Most of the business often neglects these updates. Hence it should be a daily practice to install patches and updates frequently.
Today, it is essential for your website or business application to be secured and rigidly active against the attackers. In this highly advanced internet world, you can quickly fall prey to this notorious distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.