Protecting Against DDoS Attacks

By Michael Louden On Feb 2, 2024

The rise of DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks has become a threat to businesses of all sizes, especially for small businesses. A DDoS attack is when a bad actor takes advantage of the capacity limits of any network resource and overloads them, leading the resource to not properly function and go offline.

Our 2023 Cybersecurity Threat Report tells us that DDoS attacks show no signs of slowing, out of 23.5 billion cybersecurity attacks detected last year, 210 million were attempts to use DDoS attacks to affect business operations by shutting down critical application servers and network resources. While no industry is safe, those that collect unique data like customer information, business records or financial transactions are at an even greater risk. As they are easy and cheap to create, DDoS attacks are a popular choice among cyber attackers, all they need is the target IP address or range of IP addresses they want to attack. Understanding these attacks and how to defend against them, will help businesses keep their operations secure and running smoothly.

Set up defenses now, not later: The U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) recommends working with an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to defend against DDoS attacks. That’s because even if you set up your own firewall protections to control incoming network traffic during DDoS attacks, only your ISP can effectively solve data overflow issues coming from the wider internet into your network.

Learn how to spot a threat: To help safeguard networks, the first step is to learn how to spot a threat. While working with a DDoS mitigation service provider, small businesses can learn to monitor traffic for IP addresses that may indicate suspicious and/or malicious traffic. By learning about the makeup and characteristics of each DDoS attack, small businesses can proactively adapt their defenses, effectively mitigate future threats, and configure notification alerts. For further protection, small businesses can consider using comprehensive monitoring solutions and controls that can provide real-time reporting and alerts.

Limit network traffic if attacked: If an attack does get past a small business’ line of defense, network traffic can be dropped or limited as malicious traffic at the network’s edge, giving businesses time to act and set up a diversion. Once a threat is detected, service providers can divert traffic to distributed scrubbing centers capable of driving the malicious traffic away from the targeted infrastructure.

Connect back safely: The final step would be delivering clean,
legitimate traffic back to a business’s network via a secure tunnel. And because an experienced provider led the process, internet downtime is exponentially reduced. 

Stay informed to take action: Staying informed of the growing vulnerability landscape and sophisticated tactics hackers use is crucial to defending against them and saving time and resources for your business in the long run.

About the Author: Michael Louden, regional vice president of Comcast Business for Comcast’s Freedom Region, which serves Greater Philadelphia, New Jersey and northern Delaware, is responsible for sales, installation, revenue, operating P&L, capital budget, return-on-investment and customer satisfaction.

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