How To Prevent DDoS: Is It Even Possible?

Quite a few problems in the cyber world, and outside of it, can be better handled by prevention than by after-the-fact mitigation measures. This is also the case for DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks that are now becoming a scourge for websites across the world.

The anatomy of such an attack is considered to be the most dangerous form of cybercrime simply because it is kind of its “formless” nature and relative ease of execution. Today, with rent-a-DDoS services available for as low as $30-$50 and free DDoS tools that could be downloaded directly from Goolge provided links,  these disruptive attacks can come from wide number of sources, take on many forms and unleashed against every size and type of business and its website.

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This begs the question of “How to prevent DdoS?”
There has been plenty of talk about the possibility of DDoS prevention. While the percentages and figures may differ, there have been some common findings, such as:

• A large percentage of respondents have faced at least one type of DDoS attack in the recent past
• Most of the times, such attacks succeed simply because the business organizations have not been prepared adequately
• There were early warning signs, most often as treats in Social Media channels
• There seems to be a bit of lag as far as information availability and prevention methods and their adoption is concerned
• Size of the business has been absolutely no protection against such attacks. Big and small organizations have been the victim of various types of DDoS attacks
• Early not only minimizes immediate damage but also discourages further attack attempts

Quickly deflecting DDoS attacks
Many leading companies are working on, and have even brought about solutions, that try and prevent the DDoS attack before it can become too massive to handle. For instance, one thought process states that the best way to prevent such DDoS attacks is at the edge of the network or even outside of it – on recently popular cloud based anti-DDoS platforms. Auto monitoring is also proving to be a key factor which effects early response and overall mitigation time – preventing the attack from escalating beyond control

Importance of monitoring for timely prevention
Nothing can replace the need for constant and intelligent monitoring of the network. Such monitoring services have to be proactive and have to be deployed by a company that knows what it is doing. Only with such proactive, smart and incessant monitoring, can a network be protected against DDoS attacks.
 It is also important to be realistic about the scope of prevention. Most leading companies in this domain will tell you categorically that there is no successful prevention technique in place. All organization can really do, is to identify the presence of such attacks very quickly and then deploy protection mechanisms or defense mechanisms.

The weapons of war
When you are thinking of how to prevent DDoS attacks, you need to go in with versatile tools and weapons, which will allow:

• Swift identification of illegitimate or malicious traffic
• Quick deployment of detection and deflection mechanisms which can prevent or minimize the damage that DDoS attacks can cause
• Implementing protection mechanisms that are aware of the various known forms of DDoS attacks so they are able to detect changes in the fabric of the traffic coming to your network based on such information.

James is a writer and blogger with 5 years experience.