To ensure your business is available to connected users and customers, it is necessary to make available a page that is efficient, hosted on a quality service and that you can deliver your services and products to consumers. And it is precisely in this regard that the DDOS attack usually acts.
Keeping the site itself demands a lot of investment and dedication from the company. Dealing with the slow page can be a real shock, especially when the company followed all steps and took care of every detail so that the site was available with quality to all users and consumers.
Suddenly your site is unavailable or extremely slow, and few customers get their services and products. This problem can last only a few minutes or even days , making a big impact on your business and profitability.
For this reason, it is very important to know how DDOS attack works and what are the best ways to deal with this and other types of cyber threat . To help you, we have prepared a full article on the subject, with important and relevant information so that you can deal with this kind of threat more efficiently.
What is a DDOS attack?
It is the acronym of Distributed Denial of Service, which translated would be approximately “distributed denial of service”. In this sense, the DDOS attack is a derivation of this threat. While the attack of the involves only one attacker, who can be a server, computer or user, the DDOS attack is made up of a set of many DOS attacks. Understand the difference between them with this video:
With more computers or servers performing the attack, it becomes more effective, causing even more drastic consequences for the victim . Using various computers for massive submission of requests to the same site , server or service. Thus, the attack can make access extremely slow or unavailable.
In this type of attack there is no contamination of computers with viruses and malware or damage to files. Simply put, it consists of the overload that makes your website or server slow and even inaccessible. For this to be possible, cybercriminals use various infected computers called botnets.
Commanded only by cybercriminal, through this attack you can direct these computers to just one network or server, sending multiple requests. Because of this excess of attempts, legitimate users are unable to access the page, causing huge damage to the company.
Because it is not an attack involving computers contamination, DDOS attack can often be underestimated. However, imagine the impact that unavailability of services can have on a large retail network, for example. The company will suffer a great loss in sales, loss of return on investment in its marketing campaigns, falling profitability and market positioning, etc.
In the first half of 2022 alone, there was a 75.6% increase in DDO attacks compared to the same period of the previous year, reaching the scary number of 6,019,888 attacks.
Taking this into consideration, DDOS attack should never be underestimated. This type of attack has already victimized organizations of various types, such as hospitals, government agencies, large retailers, e-commerce, and many others .
How does this type of attack work?
The DDOS attack begins long before its application. For it to be possible, cybercriminals infect various computers and machines, turning them into botnets (infected computers that can be commanded by cybercriminals). These computers are used to send multiple requests that make the DDOS attack effective.
With this, we can calculate that the more infected computers the cybercriminal use, the greater the efficiency of the attack and, consequently, the damage caused by it.
Over the years , DDOS has become one of the main threats for the digital security of companies and organizations of all kinds . Because of the problems it can cause for a business, efficient tools have been developed that help the company identify and mitigate this type of attack.
See what are the main types of DDOS attacks being applied today:
What problems can this type of attack raise for your business?
Many managers wonder about the real need to protect themselves against a DDO attack, after all it is a temporary attack that, unlike other types of cyber attacks , has no purpose to corrupt data or steal sensitive information. However, cybercriminals do not usually apply a DDOS attack on low -flow days.
Taking advantage of the vulnerability of the business and the biggest chance of negotiation (when along with the attack the cybercriminal also makes an attempted extortion ), DDOS attacks are often applied at times of great flow such as Black Friday , holiday campaigns, or other important dates for the company. Thus, it is applied to have the greatest possible impact on the victim , especially regarding the loss of profitability and the losses caused to the company's image.
A company that operates only in the digital environment depends on the availability of your site and pages to be active. That said, attacking your services is to attack the continuity of your business .
Financial losses
A large company that is attacked during a period of high sales and access flow can have substantial losses due to a DDOS attack. When this attack directed to financial institutions, for example, the consequences can be numerous:
- Your users may be unable to perform important operations;
- Extreme slowness during transfers;
- Impossibility to pay slips;
- Confidential data leakage , such as bank statements, credit card information, passwords, etc.;
- Damage to the institution's image before the market and consumers;
- Among many other problems.
Regardless of the size and type of company or organization, the unavailability of services can have a major impact on profitability . Suppose a medium-sized e-commerce suffers such an attack just during the most relevant campaign for its annual profitability.
Although there is no contamination of the devices, a request for redemption for stolen data or leakage of confidential information, the company will have a great impact on sales of products and services that ceased to happen while the attack was being executed.
Recovery after the attack
A DDOS attack is very expensive for the cybercriminal and when it is not successful, it cannot be profitable for those who perform it. In extreme cases, unavailability can take days until it can be recovered.
Once your services have been unavailable for a certain period of time, it is impossible to resume sales that ceased to happen. After the attack, it is necessary to inform users of the return on activities and seek tools that help to avoid further threats.
It is important for the company to do an intense job to rebuild its market image (depending on the time when services are unavailable) and recover lost customers.
Damage to the image of the company
DDOS attacks are not a big threat only for large retailers, financial institutions, government agencies or service suppliers. Many companies depend on business applications , such as sales automation tools, emails and CRM.
For this reason, it is important that, regardless of the business of your business, you have a DDO mitigation tool. When successful , this type of attack can make a big impact on the company's image , especially on the reliability of its customers and consumers.
Your brand can be impaired in the market, making consumers think twice before trying to use their services again. Another impaired, but very relevant damage to this type of attack is that if your company has suffered an effective DDOS attack, it is a clear sign that it is vulnerable, ie new cyber attacks will come and probably with even greater force.
Interruption of activities
Interruption of activities is the first sign that a DDO attack is in action . Depending on your access flow, it is not always noticed immediately after its beginning. Often, interruption of services began a long time before and the company is already suffering from the consequences of the DDOS attack, so that the damage can be even greater.
When a site is unavailable to users, it results in a gateway error, which can damage your positioning in the rankings of major search engines such as Google. With this, even after the recovery of the attack, your company will still suffer damage arising from this action.
Great DDOS attacks of 2022
In 2022, there were large cases of DDOS attacks. Some with enough relevance to involve governments and large security teams. See below the main ones:
Attacks during the Russian War X Ukraine
During the recent war in Ukraine, a true IT army was formed, conducting DDOS attacks against the main resources and services provided by Russia. The goal is to unable services and cause major inconvenience to the country.
Revil Group attacks
This group, which has already been responsible for other DDOS attacks on a large scale, began to send redemption notes even before the attack began, charging the victims a substantial amount so that the attack would not happen. This is the same group that caused the JBS Group activities in Brazil. Earlier this year, some members of the group were detained in Poland.
Attacks on countries that manifested themselves in the war
Several countries suffered DDOS attacks due to the world political situation, such as:
- Russia has increased by almost three times in the DDOS attacks, from the moment it declared the beginning of the conflict with Ukraine;
- North American satellite telecommunications providers found a growth in high impact attacks after starting support for Ukraine communications infrastructure;
- Ireland also recorded a sudden increase in DDOS attacks after providing services to Ukraine organizations;
What is the best way to protect yourself?
There are some actions and strategies that can be applied to prevent your business from suffering from DDOS attack, such as:
1 - Bandwidth: If your company has plenty of bandwidth in the connection, it is more difficult to be the victim of a DDOS attack. This is because it is prepared to meet a large volume of requests , not being affected by low impact attacks and reducing damage caused by higher strength attacks.
2 - Count on a reserve connection: It is a smart strategy to have a backup connection and a distinct IPS set for your critical users. Thus , the company can count on an alternative path when the primary network is overloaded with the excess of false requests that are sent by cybercriminals.
3 - Learn to identify the DDOS attack: The sooner the problem is noted, the lower the impact it has. Therefore, it is important that the company has a traffic monitoring system of its networks. The DDOS attack is one of today's most common cyber attacks tools that can automatically identify standards of access , so when there is a sudden increase in users, those responsible can be notified, helping to identify an ongoing DDS attack.
4 - Use a protective tool: There are several tools on the market that help you protect yourself against DDOS attacks. They can identify and interrupt ongoing attacks using tools aimed at deviating traffic and blocking malicious IPs. Here are some of the most commonly used tools today:
- Fastnetmon : It is an easy -to -use tool, acting as a high -performance load analyzer. It has several packet capture mechanisms to identify an agile attack.
- Service operators anti-DDS: Companies such as Oi , Vivo and Embratel have business-oriented anti-DDS solutions, with the advantage of being available in Portuguese.
- Cloudflare: Delivering simplified solutions to users, Cloudflare has an anti-DDS tool that helps identify and mitigate these attacks efficiently.
Remember that there are several types of attack , not just DDOS and that new ways to get data, information and access from companies and users on the Internet are constantly created.
Simple and free protection systems, today certainly do not make sense to companies , considering the levels of protection and also the LGPD annions , which in some cases the fine may be a millionaire.
I hope this text will help you and your business implement an efficient DDOS protection system.
Until later!
