DDoS attacks are a business’ worst nightmare. One of the biggest problems on the Internet, they are very hard to stop. They’re also growing in volume and complexity. All businesses with an online presence are at risk.
Since DDoS attacks are now a reality of doing business online, preventing them from disrupting your services is imperative. But there is no silver bullet. In fact, a holistic solution should be one part technology and one part human.
The Technology
Certain attacks can be mitigated purely through automation. Firewalls and routers are the first protective barriers to your network. You can set up control lists on your routers to block connections to ports on which you have no services. As DDoS attacks become more political and ideological in nature, the attackers are also more determined and persistent. This new breed of cybercriminals will try different attack vectors to flood your infrastructure and disrupt your online business. When properly configured, your routers and firewalls will automatically prevent such traffic from reaching your servers. This is very effective and should be a part of any mitigation strategy.
Equally effective are advanced Al algorithms. These algorithms are built into routers and DDoS mitigation hardware and can provide a picture of an attack in progress. You can also define the thresholds to drop traffic when certain levels are reached. Al algorithms are great for handling simple attacks. However, without careful tuning, they can also drop good traffic, disrupting business as usual.
The Human Aspect
That’s where the human aspect of DDoS mitigation comes in. As attacks become more complex—many moving from Layer 3, the network layer, to Layer 7, the application layer—human expertise is essential to distinguishing good traffic from bad.
These days, it’s easy and cheap to craft attacks that target your network’s vulnerabilities. For a very nominal fee, botnets can be rented to launch large-scale sophisticated attacks. Preventing such attacks takes time and creativity, even if you have the latest mitigation tools. In other words, you need highly experienced people to make the right real-time decisions and craft correct mitigation strategies.
Before you lose big in downtime, revenue or brand equity, make sure your mitigation solution is a balance of technology and human expertise. To defeat DDoS attacks, you need both man and machine.
