Have you ever tried to buy event tickets and found that the seller's website could not serve thousands of people all trying to do the same thing simultaneously?
The ticket site fails to deliver – usually temporarily – because the server is overloaded with requests it can't possibly complete.
Criminal Distributed Denial of Service attacks, DDoS for short, commonly exploits the same principles.
When a DDoS attack targets a business, it floods the internet connection and servers, forcing them to be overwhelmed, and fail.
The attacker's goal is for the business and or its customers being unable to access services. While this may trigger a temporary failure, it could be more severe to the company's bottom line and reputation. Last year, there were more attacks, and the average DDoS attack lasted 50 minutes.
While that may not sound like a long time, it's enough to create angry customers and bring business to a grinding halt. Resulting in downtime that can be costly.
The bad news is that DDoS attacks are lasting longer and becoming more sophisticated while becoming a familiar form of attack.
Recently, the most significant reported DDoS attack was successfully blocked. But at its peak, 71 million requests to the targeted servers per SECOND made. Before that, the largest reported incident stood at 46 million requests per second.
Worse still, more businesses report being targeted by DDoS attacks where the criminals demand huge ransoms to stop the attack. Unfortunately, these criminals perform a small and limited demonstration. When you ignore them, they hammer you to prove their point and to get your attention.
What does this mean for you?
You must check that your security measures are up-to-date and working as they should be. For example, is your firewalls up to the task, with DDoS monitoring and prevention tools in place and set up? And most importantly, is your team fully aware of the importance of staying vigilant to recognize the signs of an attack to deal with it?
If you need help to make sure your business stays protected. Just get in touch. And we will see what we can do for you.
#DDoSAttack #CyberCrime #CyberSecurity
