DDoS Attacks: How to Protect Your Website

How to protect a website from DDoS attacks? This is an unpleasant event for any site, which can greatly harm both the business and its reputation among users. Almost every DDoS attack is carefully planned and almost always causes harm. Therefore, it is important to think about protecting a web resource before attackers (hackers) attack it.

 What is a DDoS attack

DDoS is short for Distributed Denial of Service. It is an attack on a computer system that causes it to crash. Most often, it is performed simultaneously from several computers.

Consequences of a DDoS attack:

• Denial of Service: A DDoS attack can lead to server overload and denial of service, resulting in a site or service being unavailable to users.
• Loss of Profits: If a site or service is down, then it can lead to loss of profit for the company, especially if it is an online store or service that provides paid services.
• Loss of customers: If users cannot access a site or service, then they may move to competitors, resulting in the loss of customers.
• Reputation Deterioration: If a site or service is frequently subjected to DDoS attacks, this can negatively affect the company’s reputation and cause mistrust among users.
• Protection costs: To protect against DDoS attacks, a company may require additional costs for the purchase of special equipment or DDoS protection services.
• Legal Consequences: If a DDoS attack is a crime, the company may seek damages and go to court.

In general, a DDoS attack can have serious consequences for a company and its users, so it is important to take steps to protect against such attacks. The server on which the online resource is located is so overloaded with requests that it is unable to process them. As a result, the site is blocked and becomes inaccessible.

Common causes of DDoS attacks:

• decrease in the ranking of an Internet resource in a search engine
• revenge on the site owner
• the desire to make the Internet resource unavailable during mass sales
• extorting money to stop the attack
• dissatisfied customer decided to play a trick on the company

A DDoS attack is a malicious act designed to harm a competitor or demand a ransom to stop the attack.

The danger of DDoS attacks

If a cyber attack has already occurred, then it is impossible to immediately minimize the damage from a hacker attack. Losses in this case are inevitable. The sooner protective measures are taken, the less damage there will be. The site can be disabled, for example, during seasonal sales, peak influx of buyers – for example, at the height of Black Friday or on New Year’s Eve. In this case, the owner of the resource will receive losses and a blow to the reputation. To prevent this from happening, you need to take care of protecting the resource before such a situation arises.

There are methods of dealing with hacker attacks that will help to cope with the attack, at least for a while. After that, you need to contact a professional service (treatment and restoration of the site), or a service that provides hosting services.

There are other dangers of DDoS attacks. Sometimes cybercriminals use such actions to divert attention from their other activities. In the meantime, while you are fighting an unexpected hacker attack, confidential information located on the same site can be stolen from you.

Independent ways of protection

There are many ways to protect yourself from hackers. For example, configuring Apache configuration files using the mod_security module for Apache. An effective tool is to install an nginx proxy server in conjunction with Apache, which will increase the security of the system. Nginx in this case will strengthen Apache and take over the processing of static content.

You can purchase protection from specialized cybersecurity service providers. When protection is installed, traffic will pass through filters. As a result, only real visitors will visit your Internet resource. Using this method, you can repel most attacks. Also, the concern for repelling hacker attacks can be shifted to the shoulders of the hosting service. You need to ask your hosting provider if they can protect the resource in case of an attack.

Some hosting companies are able to set up protection against hacker intrusions and help their customers in case of an attack. You need to find out what protection the hosting provider uses and whether there is an anti-hacker service for hosting users at all. However, this is not the whole list of how to protect an Internet resource from intrusion.

How to prevent a DDoS attack

Unfortunately, there are no universal methods that will help minimize the risks of DDoS attacks on your site. But there are some basic tips to help you stay safe:

Make sure your hosting provider has incoming traffic filtering. Third-party companies that specialize in this can protect against large and complex attacks, but it is important that the provider also has protection.

Update software in a timely manner. It is important to follow and not miss timely updates of software and network services.

Be careful. Make a plan of action to quickly use it if you notice an attack – for example, connect another server, set a server limit.

Purchase the “DDoS Protection” service from a third-party company. When the attack starts, professional companies will “take away” all traffic and let only verified users through.

If the attack has already occurred, you need to separate the junk requests from the real ones so that only the real ones get through. True, if the attack is large, their own forces, even with full-time programmers, may not be enough. Then professional companies will help with protection.

Professional protection

Professional DDoS protection can be quite expensive, but it provides the highest level of protection against all types of DDoS attacks. One of the main advantages of professional protection is the constant monitoring of network traffic, which allows you to quickly detect and respond to an attack.

Professional security systems can provide a high level of traffic filtering and use various methods such as machine learning and traffic behavior analysis to detect and block attacks.

Also, professional DDoS protection services usually include 24/7 technical support and expert emergency assistance. Professional protection companies can also provide performance reports and analytics to ensure maximum protection effectiveness.

DDoS attacks can cause serious damage to a business, so you need to take steps to prevent them. Some of the security methods, such as strict access, flushed DNS cache, choosing a reliable hosting provider, captcha on all forms, and filtering incoming traffic, can be implemented by yourself.

However, professional protection can provide a wider range of methods and additional options for monitoring and responding to attacks.

When choosing methods to protect against DDoS attacks, you need to assess the risks depending on the type of business and resources. In any case, it is important to be on your guard and take steps to prevent DDoS attacks so that you do not run into serious problems in the future.