DDoS attacks

5 Best Practices for Mitigating DDoS Attacks

DDoS attacks keep multiplying in a scary way. Statistics clearly show their power to disrupt and damage all types of online organizations and businesses. Currently, there’s no way not to be 100% prepared!

5 Best Practices for Mitigating DDoS Attacks.

Prepare a static version of your website.

If you get ready with this static version, you will have an alternative destination to send your traffic if your site goes down because of the attack.

Besides, static versions offer other advantages. They improve the speed of loading the site. They take less bandwidth and processing power, and this will decrease the strain on your servers.

There are different ways to create your static website version, but they are up to the web hosting platform you use.

Get AI as a security tool.

DDoS attacks dimensions, speed, and the fact that they can be implemented during not working hours or days limit the humans’ response. Based on the knowledge of the constant traffic patterns and other indexes like bandwidth consumption, speed, etc., artificial intelligence (AI) can detect and take actions against a DDoS attack. Whenever is needed, AI can block accesses from suspicious spots, execute distribution of traffic to relieve the attack server’s load, for it not to crash, monitor non-stop, and so on.

Choose multi-layer DDoS defenses.

DDoS attacks have evolved a lot, getting more and more harmful. In the past, they used to target mainly the network and the transport layers. But currently, techniques and the combination of them can target other layers, too, like the application and the session layers. 

Every layer involves different functionality. So get DDoS protection that offers proper defenses on multiple layers to fight back the criminals well.

Limit the attack surface.

To limit the surface for criminals to attack your business means to reduce their chances (entry points, servers, ports, protocols, etc.) to reach your vital assets. You can enable this best practice for mitigating a DDoS attack through different strategies. Here there are some examples:

  • You can protect your servers and other resources by putting them behind the load balancers. 
  • Frequently, applications or websites keep irrelevant or unnecessary features, services, legacy processes, etc. Remove them all, and you will close possible entry points for attackers.
  • A content delivery network (CDN) service combined with a web application firewall (WAF) put on the network border can stop direct access to the server and resources. Content is cached on servers located worldwide, and requests are served only from them. Requests of content that hasn’t been cached have to pass through the filter (WAF). 

Strength your network architecture.

What you need is to transform your regular network architecture into a robust one capable of resisting a DDoS attack. This involves getting proper weapons to fight back the attack and mitigate it as much as possible. Consider having wide bandwidth, a load balancing mechanism to handle huge traffic loads, and sudden spikes. Get enough DNS servers strategically located to rely on if a server goes down because of the attack. This redundancy will avoid disruptions to the service. 

Conclusion.

Talking about DDoS attacks, prevention is the best practice. But if it fails, you still can be prepared to mitigate them. Seriously consider these 5 best practices for mitigating DDoS attacks. They could save your online business!