We remember only too well, some two years ago, numerous Swiss webshops being paralysed. The reason was simple but effective: Devious DDoS attacks that hindered the availability of certain online services, even causing them to fail for days. Anyone who thinks all that is now under control would be very much mistaken. Massively so in fact! 2017 went down in the annals of cyber security history as “the year of the DDoS attacks”. And, just a few days ago, a huge Denial-of-Service attack was once again the topic of much conversation. Namely, the GitHub developer platform was the victim of a recorded attack which reached traffic volumes of 1.35 Tbps (!). Find out how to avoid the same happening to your company and what effective DDoS protection looks like in practice from our experts in this report.
First of all, let’s define what DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) actually means. This is an attack on specific services or servers. The aim of these attacks is clear: quite simply to interfere with the availability of these services or systems. Or, in other words, to make the service unavailable. This is (unfortunately) frequently achieved because the attack is carried out by countless distributed computers which have been previously infected with malicious software. The attackers then remotely misuse this infected network of computers – also called a botnet – for their DDoS attacks.
DDoS attacks: Negative trend likely to continue
The problem lies in the simplicity. Nowadays, virtually anyone can launch an attack. Conversely, nearly every company is a potential victim or target. It is precisely this framework that makes DDoS attacks so dangerous and cunning.
Our experts are convinced that DDoS attacks have (sadly) not yet reached their peak. On the contrary: they look set to increase. More Swiss companies will be victims of attacks. We believe this needs to end. And as soon as possible! For the effects and risks for companies like yours can be fatal:
- economic damage
- loss of reputation and image
- data theft
- blackmail
New, multi-stage concept for safeguarding against DDoS attacks
You may well now be wondering – and rightly so – what protection is best suited to your company. This question is not all that easy to answer however since it depends on individual factors, for example, how your company is set up. Or, in other words, what potential targets there are. What is clear is that you have the option of choosing between various defensive strategies – in the cloud, on-premise or a combination of the two. For high-volume attacks like those mentioned above, cloud-based protection is needed. On-site protection is also necessary however to prevent covert attacks at the application level.
In-cloud protection
With its cloud, our partner Arbor Networks provides a carrier-independent solution offering reliable protection against complex and high-volume attacks without affecting the availability of applications and services.
On-premise protection
On-premise solutions offer immediate local protection against overload attacks, lower volume DDoS attacks and application-specific attacks. They stop incoming DDoS attacks and outgoing malicious activities by manipulated internal hosts.
Combination of in-cloud and on-premise
Our favourite thanks to the maximum promise of security: a hybrid option or a combination of both solutions. Why? Because in this way you are protected against the whole range of DDoS attacks. On the one hand, an on-premise solution from Arbor provides continuous monitoring of all traffic. On the other, if attacks are so large scale that they can no longer be tackled by on-site solutions, the traffic can be diverted to the cloud. With cloud signalling, warnings are automatically sent to your service provider or are generated in the Arbor cloud when the availability of services is endangered by larger attacks. This means that DDoS attacks can be averted quicker.
