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Every business with an online presence wants traffic, but sometimes, a spike in the number of visitors on your website doesn’t result in an increase in sales. Instead, it could be a malicious actor trying to shut down the platform.
That’s the summary of a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack, and it’s one of the deadliest cyber threats businesses face today. If your business runs online services, you could be at risk of this attack.
To protect your reputation and prevent the potential financial losses that come with data breaches, it’s crucial to know how to protect your brand from a DDoS hack. Here are some strategies to keep your organization safe from these threats:
A critical part of protecting your business from DDoS attacks is having a strategy for dealing with them in case they happen. That’s because even the most in-depth preventive measures can fail sometimes.
Your DDoS mitigation plan should include how to identify a breach, the dedicated response team with clear roles on minimizing the impact of the attack, and ways to keep operations running during the attack.
The response team should include IT/cybersecurity experts and public relations professionals. While the tech team works on stopping the attack, the PR team will focus on communicating with customers and stakeholders. Having a communication strategy during a data breach is essential.
DDoS attacks shut down your networks with excessive traffic. This prevents customers from accessing your online services. So, you want to quickly reach out to them about the situation and the steps taken to restore operations, thereby restoring confidence in your brand.
Hackers typically target vulnerable points of a network. That’s why It’s necessary to review all your digital assets to determine any possible entry points for malicious actors.
Your evaluation should cover hardware and software networks. Regularly check for any weaknesses, such as systems that aren’t up-to-date.
We also recommend identifying the most important parts of your online architecture, especially those that could severely impact the business if they’re shut down. Pin-pointing vulnerable and essential networks can help you determine where to fully focus your DDoS protection efforts.
Securing your network is probably the most important DDoS prevention strategy because it’s how you keep the hackers out – whether you run an online shop or a B2B company. The first step to network security is monitoring your traffic.
You should look out for specific signs that indicate a DDoS attack. Some tell-tale signals include sudden increased traffic from an IP address or device, slow website or network performance, and system crashes.
We strongly recommend real-time DDoS monitoring so you can keep an eye on the network round-the-clock. You can set up Web Application Firewalls to inspect the traffic in your network. Once an attack has been spotted, this technology can help prevent widespread infiltration by denying traffic requests from some sources if they appear suspicious.
Beyond firewalls, many organizations also use rate limiting to prevent DDoS attacks. This technique reduces the number of requests an IP address or device can send to your network. As such, it becomes more difficult to overwhelm the system with traffic.
Having a secure network is critical to DDoS prevention, but it doesn’t completely safeguard your organization against threats. Not when there’s the human factor, after all. An employee clicking on a phishing email, for instance, can give hackers access to your network to launch an attack.
That’s why it’s critical to educate your team on cyber threats like DDoS breaches – especially if you’re recruiting frequently as you scale up your business. Regularly organize periodic training sessions to teach them how to identify an attack, prevention techniques, and response drills.
It’s important to make the training sessions frequent because cyber threats constantly evolve. As such, your staff members need to stay in-tune with the latest trends in cybersecurity. Make the seminars mandatory for all staff, including those working from home.
DDoS breaches are one of the many threats companies face today, and in many instances, malicious attacks can use them as a distraction to execute other attacks.That’s why you shouldn’t focus all your security resources on DDoS hacks alone.
Instead, implement a robust strategy to prevent all forms of cyber threats. Full-scale protection ensures your business is equipped to respond to the different threats plaguing the digital world.
Statistics show that the financial cost of cybercrime will likely hit $15.63 trillion by 2029. In other words, a single DDoS attack can cost your business unbelievable monetary losses, and we’ve not even considered the potential reputation damage and public backlash.
Considering the ripple effects, it’s a no-brainer to invest in cybersecurity for your company. Businesses are a prime target for hackers. So, even if your firm hasn’t suffered a breach yet, there’s no ruling out the possibility. However, with the tips in this article, you can safeguard your online networks from a DDoS breach.
Cover Photo by Clint Patterson on Unsplash
* This post is written in collaboration with our guest contributor, who has financially supported its publication.
Alex Quin is a full-stack marketing expert and global keynote speaker. Founder and Chief Marketing Officer of UADV Marketing - a member of the Forbes Agency Council.
