The year of the pandemic i.e 2020 brought many changes to the world. It was also known as the year of the DDoS attack. Being exposed digitally has left individuals and businesses at risk of different kinds of attacks including DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks.
What is a DDoS Attack?
Overwhelming a server, service, or network with massive amounts of Internet traffic is the goal of a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS). Attackers can effectively shut down a server or site by bombarding it with requests for information. This leaves the server vulnerable and disrupts normal commercial activities for an organization. (https://www.classicsofttrim.com)
As a business or even an individual with sensitive data on their machines, you should be wary of these attacks and know how to stop a DDoS attack if you are to fall victim to it.
What Are The Types of DDoS attacks?
There are 3 main types of DDoS attacks that you need to know about when trying to look for the best DDoS protection:
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Protocol Attacks
A protocol attack depletes server resources. It sends sluggish pings, malformed pings, and partial packets to network locations that check connections. These overflow the target computer’s memory buffer, causing it to crash. Firewalls cannot halt DDoS attacks because protocol attacks can exploit web application firewalls (WAF).
The SYN flood attack is a typical protocol attack. An unfinished TCP/IP connection is used to start it. The client sends a SYN packet, and the server responds with an ACK. The client should then send another ACK packet, but doesn’t, leaving the server waiting and wasting resources.
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Volumetric Attacks
The most prevalent sort of DDoS assault, volumetric attacks overwhelm a computer or network’s bandwidth with fake data requests on every accessible port. This prevents the network from accepting normal traffic. There are additional subcategories of volumetric attacks.
The most popular sort of volumetric assault is a UDP (User Datagram Protocol) flood, which is frequently used to transmit forged UDP packets with bogus addresses — such as the IP address of the victim — to servers for UDP-based applications, thereby generating a flood of return traffic.
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Application Attacks
Application attacks, like protocol attacks, target application vulnerabilities. These attacks generally target direct web traffic and are difficult to detect since a system may believe it is merely dealing with an unusually high volume of Internet traffic.
Ways to Prevent DDoS Attacks
1. Follow best practices online
If you want to know how to prevent DDoS at the source then what you can do is ensure you follow good practices online. It goes without saying that your users should engage in proper security practices, such as changing passwords, utilizing secure authentication methods, avoiding phishing attacks, etc. The fewer user errors your business commits, the safer you will be, even if an attack occurs.
2. Use a VPN extension
This goes without saying that a Virtual Private Network is absolutely necessary to use when it comes to staying safe online. If you use Google Chrome, you can download a free VPN for Google Chrome, this VeePN extension is easily available on the Chrome web store. You can even use the same Chrome extensions for your iPhone or Android phones.
3. Make Your Network Foolproof
Your infrastructure should be as resistant to DDoS attacks as possible. This is one of the best ways to prevent a DDoS attack. Some DDoS assaults target firewalls. Consider putting data centers on various networks, ensuring that not all of your data centers are in the same physical area, placing servers in different data centers, and ensuring that there are no traffic bottlenecks in your network.
4. Have a Response Plan Ready
You won’t have time to plan your response when a DDoS attack occurs. Prior preparation is necessary to reduce the impact of an emergency situation. The ideal components of a response strategy are:
- A list of all the tools that will be used, including sophisticated threat detection, assessment, filtering, and software and hardware.
- Once an assault has been detected, a response team composed of individuals with clearly defined roles and duties should be assembled.
- Protocols for notification, escalation, and involvement in the case of an attack, with clearly defined rules for each
- Your ISP, vendors, and customers should all be included in your communication strategy as should a method for distributing breaking news in real time.
5. Use a CDN
The deployment of a content delivery network (CDN) is a current method of defending against DDoS attacks (CDN).
By spreading out the burden geographically and keeping the servers closer to the users, CDNs can help learn how to prevent the effects of DDoS attacks by distributing the load evenly over multiple servers.
This way, even if one of the servers fails, there are still others available. Certificate management, including the automatic production and renewal of certificates, can also be provided by CDNs.
6. Have enough server space
An effective method of countering the volumetric DDoS attacks is by over provisioning bandwidth. As a result, by increasing your server’s bandwidth capacity, you can be prepared for unexpected surges in traffic produced by DDoS attacks.
This may not totally stop a DDoS attack, but it will buy you a few more minutes to prepare additional defenses before your resources are exhausted. It’s also best you pair this with a good VPN extension.
What are Some Steps You Can Take if You Do Get attacked?
Even if you are the victim of a DDoS assault, you still have options for mitigating the damage. A cloud-based DDoS mitigation solution must be in place in order to know how to stop a DDoS attack. The following additional measures are to be taken:
- The process of assigning new IP addresses to your devices
- Maintaining the highest level of security by properly configuring DNS records
- Stopping DDoS attacks from known DDoS attack centers
- Using a separate server for email alone
- Keeping a log of all of your server connections
- Your business and clients’ intellectual property are protected by CDNetworks’ security solutions, which also secure your system and its servers.
We hope that these tips and tricks help you prevent DDoS attacks and keep your network and data secure from any unwanted and suspicious activity.
