Eight Tips for Your Company to Prevent DDoS Attacks | Free Antivirus

Neglecting protection against DDoS attacks and attacks via botnets can take a bitter revenge. If your own website or webshop is suddenly no longer accessible or servers and firewalls collapse due to overload, companies can be victims of such a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack. The likelihood of falling victim to a large-scale DDoS attack is increasing due to the increasing networking and digitization of society, the economy, and trade.

What can be done preventively to prevent it from happening? First of all: There is no 100 percent protection against DDoS attacks. Critical and professionally carried out DDoS attacks cannot be completely defended against with extreme perfection, but the consequences of DDoS can be mitigated very well with emergency and precautionary plans.

Prevent DDoS attacks: this is how it works!

To be able to prevent DDoS attacks or to let their effects run into nothing, companies should pay particular attention to the "human factor" within the framework of perfidious methods of social engineering, the scaling of the server structure, the server capacities, and the access restrictions to the website. Here are eight defense tips to protect against DDoS attacks:

·         Analysis of backup needs. Not every company is equally susceptible to DDoS attacks. Detailed DDoS strategies, security tests, and tools appear to be particularly important for companies whose core business is in the Internet sector and e-commerce - online shops and digital publishers depend on their Internet offering being accessible 24/7 without any disruption. Companies should clearly analyze which structures, systems, and business processes are susceptible to DDoS. What would happen if certain processes were to fail? DDoS attacks lead to downtimes of an average of half a day to a full day. How high would the economic damage and/or the loss of image be? On the other hand, what budgets are available for protective measures? Are the planned investments in DDoS protection in a healthy proportion to possible damage?

·         Make IT team and employees "fit for DDoS". Protection against waves of DDoS attacks is a top decision-maker issue, especially for companies with an Internet business model. DDoS should be a management task and should be carried out top-down in the company. Because: If servers fail for a longer period of time, customer relationships can be negatively affected in the long term and enormous economic damage can result. All IT employees, and especially the IT administrators, should be up to date with the latest DDoS topics and be trained. Other areas of the company should also be included in the DDoS defense strategy, such as online or shop employees who work close to the traffic.

·         Call in external security experts. Large, well-known brands but also larger medium-sized companies with complex websites and shop systems can usually not do without using professional security companies. DDoS specialists, such as the Frankfurt company, put IT in the corporate landscape through its paces. Such companies know typical DDoS patterns and attack strategies, simulate attacks, closely examine servers and the internal network and offer internal network and/or external cloud solutions (see below) for 24/7 live protection. 

·         " Anti-Bot": make the server "weatherproof". High capacities, which can cushion loads, and diversified server landscapes offer an initial, further - if not sufficient - protection against DSoS attacks. In this way, companies prevent themselves from becoming part of gigantic botnets. The capacity, based on computing power and bandwidth, should be oversized and withstand stronger waves of inquiries.

·         Installation of access protection signs on the website. Another accompanying strategy. Temporary login barriers such as captchas, which are in front of the easily accessible content for the visitor, make work more difficult for botnets.

·         Internal filtering of traffic in the company. The most important building block in the DDoS security strategy should be filter systems that recognize the DDoS traffic, fish it out, and only forward checked and clean data. Such filter systems can be installed directly behind the provider's web access point, do not require any diversion, do not require network intervention, and work like virus scanners. Such filters can cope with small-volume attacks, but such filters often reach their limits in the case of mass attacks. The cause: The upstream systems are so busy that DDoS traffic no longer reaches the filter protection.

·         External filtering: protection through scalable and dynamic cloud solutions. Even if cloud business solutions involve their own and new risks for sensitive company data, they can provide effective protection against DDoS. The more Internet traffic that is routed directly away from the company infrastructure, the higher the protection. The cloud filters the incoming traffic and forwards the “clean traffic” back to the company. High-performance cloud solutions are also able to temporarily block entire IP blocks from "attacking foreign countries". If you want to be absolutely sure, invest in a solution that combines both variants. 

·         Completion of cyber insurance. It makes sense to take out cyber insurance, especially for larger Internet providers, to prevent DDoS damage. In England and across the pond, they have already made further progress: The demand for “digital security policies” is increasing. More than a dozen insurance companies in Germany offer cyber policies for medium-sized and larger companies. All insurances cover claims for damages caused by DDoS attacks, the complete failure of communication systems, and hacker attacks.

In a combination of the various individual modules, companies can set up a corporate firewall to protect themselves against DDoS attacks and to prevent DDoS consequential damage. 

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