Recently, we discussed the steps small to mid-sized businesses should take to secure their websites. An additional security measure that you should consider is Distributed Denial-of Service (DDoS) Protection, which protects your web server from a DDoS Attack.
A DDoS Attack is an attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a server, service, or network by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of Internet traffic, resulting in Denial-of-Service to would-be users. Cybercriminals use multiple compromised computer systems as sources of attack traffic, which prevents regular traffic from arriving at your website.
With DDoS Protection in place, all traffic is first routed to a proxy server, which prevents the unwanted traffic from proceeding any further.
There are four stages of mitigating a DDoS attack:
- Detection: your website must distinguish an attack from a high volume of normal traffic, so IP address reputation and common attack patterns are used by the service to ensure legitimate visitors can always access your website and unwanted visitors cannot.
- Response: when unwanted traffic is detected, the DDoS protection network responds to an incoming identified threat by intelligently dropping malicious bot traffic and absorbing the rest of the traffic.
- Routing: then the traffic is routed to ensure manageability and prevent denial-of-service.
- Adaptation: the service is constantly analyzing traffic patterns to find repeat offenders IP addresses, geographic locations from which attacks originate, and other data that helps detection improve over time and repel future attacks.
DDoS Protection can ensure your website’s security and performance keeps pace with your web traffic as your business grows.