Safeguarding Small Businesses: Understanding and Mitigating DDoS Attacks
An overview of DDoS attacks, their impact on SMEs/Small Businesses and strategies for mitigating and preventing them.
Understanding DDoS Attacks
A DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack is a serious threat to online businesses, and just as relevant to SMEs/Small Businesses as it is to multi-Nationals. These attacks are designed to force a website, computer, or online service offline by flooding the target with many requests from multiple compromised sources, also known as bots. To illustrate, imagine a business website being bombarded with an overwhelming number of requests, rendering it inaccessible to genuine users, thus disrupting normal traffic flow.
Impact of DDoS Attacks on SMEs/Small Businesses
The impact of DDoS attacks on SMEs/Small Businesses can be devastating, affecting their financial and operational aspects. When a SMEs/Small Businesses falls victim to a DDoS attack, it often experiences a significant loss of revenue due to the unavailability of their online services or website. This disruption in normal traffic can lead to a direct financial impact, as customers are unable to access the company’s products or services, resulting in potential sales loss. Furthermore, the operational disruptions caused by a DDoS attack can lead to additional costs associated with resolving the attack, implementing protective measures, and repairing any damage caused to the business’s digital infrastructure.
Mitigating DDoS Attacks
Mitigating the impact of DDoS attacks poses a significant challenge for SMEs/Small Businesses due to the diverse types of attacks they face. For instance, volume-based or volumetric attacks flood the target with a high volume of traffic, overwhelming the network and making it difficult for legitimate users to access the services. Additionally, protocol attacks target weaknesses in network communication protocols, exploiting vulnerabilities in the network infrastructure, while application-layer attacks focus on overwhelming specific applications or services, leading to their unavailability. Learn More /… Register Free to Receive the full KPI Explainer direct to your Inbox or Smart device
