Having the role of an IT security professional is not easy, especially as the cyber threat landscape evolves. Ransomware, Trojans, Malware, and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are the most common cyber threats. Each of these have different vectors and flavors, and they all bring their own risks and costs. IT professionals know that in order to defend against the growing number of attacks, they need multiple layers of security. However, with each of these cyber threats competing for attention, how does one know which are most important to focus on? Go-to solutions include firewalls, anti-virus software, network intrusion and advanced persistent threat detection tools.
With all of these growing threats, we understand how difficult it is to prioritize which security solutions are the most important to implement. However, DDoS attacks are now becoming increasingly common as well as more dangerous and sophisticated, so if you don’t have an anti-DDoS solution in place, you must start considering the risks. If you have not knowingly been attacked, you should assume that you will be. Can your current network threat defense handle a DDoS attack? It’s proven that traditional solutions, including intrusion prevention systems and firewalls are no match for DDoS attacks.
If you think your organization is unlikely to be a DDoS target, think again; you do not have to be a high-profile company or organization to be a victim of DDoS. When most people think of DDoS, they think in terms of the incidents that make headline news, when attacks take a website or service offline. Corero research consistently shows around 4 out of every 5 attacks are under 1Gbps and last less than 10 minutes. Despite their relatively small size, they can still cause a severe amount of damage and disruption to an organization. This includes evidence to suggest hackers can used DDoS attacks as a smokescreen for more damaging data breach cyber-attacks.
Sometimes IT security staff do not even realize when their website or service is undergoing a DDoS attack because increasing sophistication is making them much harder to detect. Other times, an attack is noticed, but while the IT security staff are busily investigating why their network performance is dragging, the cyber criminals are equally busy behind the scenes testing for network vulnerabilities, installing malware, stealing intellectual property or exfiltrating sensitive data from your network. By the time IT security staff discover the true source of the problem, the criminals have already done their damage. Even if security staff detect the traffic in a timely manner and “swing” the traffic out to a cloud-based scrubbing service, that often takes 10 minutes, or more, to enforce, resulting in downtime and disruption to business continuity
That is why investing in automated, always-on protection at the network edge is your wisest move; it detects and blocks even the stealthiest DDoS attacks. There are many security issues that beg for attention, but DDoS attacks pose a double threat because while they commonly cripple a website, or service, they can also mask more nefarious and damaging network infiltrations. The only way to prevent downtime and be truly protected is by having a real-time, automatic DDoS solution in place.