Distributed Denial of Service Protection

At Fastblue we are committed to not only providing our customers with the best communication services for their business, but also, we are dedicated to thoroughly explaining these often complicated services to our clients. This way we can work together to make the right choices to suit your unique needs. In this article we will discuss one of the external factor that can negatively affect your business efficiency and we will go on the discuss measures that you can take against this factor. The issues I am referring to are DDoS Attacks.

DDoS is a commonly used acronym for Distributed Denial of Services. This is a type of attack on your business’ network that can affect your website, webmail, and business critical applications – a few of your business’ major lifelines.

How does a DDoS attack work?

 

A hacker is at the root of the DDoS attack, however, rather than attacking your computer directly, the hacker ‘employs’ zombie computers to attack your system. This allows the hacker to create a much larger attack that is able to do a great deal of damage and it also allows the hacker to get away with the attack without getting caught. Basically, the hacker has a botnet of computers. These we will refer to as zombie computers. The hacker instructs these zombie computers to attack your specific site or server simultaneously and repeatedly. This overload of communication requests is what slows your website or email exchange. Have you ever tried to visit a webpage that was incredibly slow to load? Or perhaps the site never full developed? Or, have you ever sent an email with a relatively small attachment that stayed in your outbox and never made it through to the recipient? These issues could be the result of hackwork. And to make matters worse, since the attack is coming from a multitude of zombie computers it is incredibly difficult to track the origin of the attack and end it. This makes DDoS attacks very difficult to recover from. Imagine the damage that could be done to your company and your productivity with no website or email for hours or even days.

What can business owners do to fight against DDoS attacks?

 

As with many things, the best way to fight a DDoS attack is to prevent it. But, prevention is not just the one time act of putting in place firewalls and filters. These are effective tactics but they must be employed in combination with monitoring and there are several service providers that you can choose from. Here at Fastblue.com we work with a variety of DDoS Protection and Mitigation Service providers. This allows us to set each specific business up with the service provider that meets their unique needs at the best price. Please contact us today for more information.

Image Source: hyena reality / www.freedigitalphotos.net

First Published at Fastblue.com

About Casey Wedge
 
My name is Casey Wedge and I have been with Fastblue for a few years now. I have maintained a few different positions within the company and although I am currently the Regional Manager of Sales I am very fond of writing and like to stay up to date on whats going on in the world of Telecom.

Aside from work, I have played hockey my whole life so I am decent on the rink and a very average mountain biker. Breakfast foods are my favorite and I enjoy spending time with many fellow UCSB Gaucho Alums – Olé!