Adopting Preventing measures for DDoS attacks

Adopting Preventing measures for DDoS attacks The hackers are spreading across the world. Attackers really bring huge damage to the system by corrupting the applications and infrastructure. In spite of the small scale or large scale organizations, the hackers gained the ability to steal all the information and spoil the reputation of the business. In this article, we are going to discuss briefly on what is actually a DDoS attack, how it spreads across the distributed systems, what are the different types of DDoS, how to take the preventive measures and what are the best tools available in the market. What is DDoS Attack? A distributed denial-of-service is a malicious threat which halts the entire operating system over a distributed network and makes it inaccessible to the users. The DDoS attacks will exploit all the service network machines and make its resources incompatible to the users. The malicious program attacks the network server by disrupting its normal traffic flow by flooding it with internet traffic. How DDOS spreads across the network? An attacker gains control over the systems by attempting a malware program that infects the online network machines. These infected machines or computers will then turn each one machine into a bot. The attacker then gains the remote access control for these groups of these bots across the network which is called a botnet. The attacker can direct the machines across the distributed network when this malicious botnet connection is established. Through this remote access, the attacker is able to alter the instructions to each bot when the IP address of a victim machine is targeted. All the bot machines will respond to the requests sent

to the target machine and this causes network overflow that floods the traffic and halts the system resulting in denial-of-service. Different Types of DDoS There are several types of DDOS which target the system in many different ways. The most common types of DDOS are as follows. 1. Attack on System Volume Drives This type of attack targets the machine volumes towards network bandwidth. A bot sends enormous false requests to the open ports across the network. This causes flooding with network traffic and the legitimate requests will not get through it. These volumetric attacks are mainly caused because of two protocols which are User Datagram Protocol (UDP) and Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP). The attacks are called UDP floods and ICMP floods. The UDP transmits the data without performing any checks across the network and ICMP enables the communication with the network devices. 2. Attack on Application Layer of a Network OSI model It is an attack on user applications. The DDoS usually attempts to attack the user interface of an application directly with the protocols like HTTP, DNS, HTTPS or SMTP. An attack targeting this user interface is very difficult to seize and troubleshoot and floods the web traffic easily to halt the service. 3. Attack on Network Protocols This type of protocol attacks will target the parts of a network where the network connections will be verified. The attacker will send the malformed pings to increase the size of memory across the network during its ping verification. It also targets a network firewall which causes breaking the security policies by invoking huge amounts of irregular data.

Adopting Secure measures for preventing DDoS By taking proper security measures with careful planning, it is possible for every business organisation to protect from DDoS attacks. Follow these guidelines which help you to safeguard your machines from attackers. 1. Make a response plan Create a response plan to set up all the possibilities of identifying the vulnerabilities in your system and define a clear response from your organization during the occurrence of a DDoS attack. 2. Allocate the roles among team members Assign the roles to the team members who are working on the data centres and network administration or IT help desk who can solve these issues. Arrange the roles in your organization such that everyone should be knowing whom to contact during these situations. Prepare a complete list of internal and external contacts which helps them. 3. Install the safeguarding tools Purchase and install the protection tools for both network and applications in use. The tools can be an Anti-Virus, Firewall, network monitoring software, threat monitoring systems, intrusion detection systems or any anti-malware programs. These tools will help in monitoring your network traffic over machines and can generate alerts during the intrusion. 4. Update everything Keeps the systems up to date. Fix all the bugs or any other related issues by updating your system applications and operating system regularly. These updates

make you detect the threats as soon as possible which is the best way for preventing DDoS attacks. Implementation of Tools 1. Cloudflare It uses a database for tracking all the threats across the network and implements the preventive measures against the malicious traffic which harms the systems by getting through the network. It is scalable and integrates all the multiple DDoS techniques for providing it as a single solution. 2. Security Event Manager The Security Event Manager (SEM) has the ability to block the suspicious IP addresses across the network, disabling the devices containing the malicious

program, killing the applications which behave improperly. It keeps track of all the events for monitoring and audits even USB devices connected to the system. 3. Imperva The Imperva has a high capability in processing the packets across the network which keeps the entire network safe and secure. The dashboard displays the details of traffic attacks and provides the options “always-on” or “on-demand DDoS protection” depending on the needs of an organization.

Conclusion It is said that prevention is always better than cure and the same statement is applicable for protection against the DDoS attacks. By adopting these preventative measures and supporting tools we can defend our systems at the high-security level. With the use of these self-defending automation tools, the network is always secured during the intrusions which alert you to take any action before an attacker will gain access to your systems. ​Cyberoam​ offers various security measures in managing the threats. It requires proper training to get a glance at it.