DDoS (Distributed denial-of-service) attacks have been on the rise for a few years. It is becoming integral for tech and marketing teams to learn how to stop a DDoS attack, considering that it may lead to a significant loss in business revenue. So, this means that employing the right protection tools is so important.

A DDoS protection solution is essential due to the prevalence of DDoS attacks. You lack all tools necessary to defend against internet attacks without one. Before we look at the several DDoS tools that can aid in and stop these attacks, let’s explore why they are being carried out.

What Is a DDoS Attack?

A DDoS attack uses a tool just like a bot that floods the network with signals again and again and it causes the network to stop being able to process genuine requests from the users or other parts of the networks. Web services and platforms are usually at risk because hackers have the capability to target crucial services that can overwhelm the network with traffic.

DDoS attacks are used against large businesses and banks quite often so they can cause problems with business reputation if the users are not aware why the website and service is down. So, these are some reasons to learn about how to stop and prevent the attacks which are crucial for business operations and success.

What is the motivation behind these DDoS Attacks?

DDoS attacks are becoming quite a common type of cyber threat that has accelerated in the past year in number and volume both as per the recent market research. The trend is towards the shorter attack duration and bigger packet per second attack volume. So, attackers get motivated by:

1. Ideology:

Hactivists utilize DDos attacks to go after websites with whom they disagree ideologically.

2. Business Disputes:

DDoS attacks can be purposefully used by businesses to take down the websites of their rivals, preventing them from taking part in a big event like Cyber Monday, for example.

3. Boredom:

Cyber vandals, often known as “script-kiddies,” employ prewritten scripts to initiate DDoS attacks. These attacks are generally carried out by bored would-be hackers seeking a sense of adrenaline.

4. Extortion:

DDoS attacks are employed by perpetrators, or the threat of them, to coerce money from their victims.

5. Cyber Warfare:

DDoS assaults that are permitted by the government can be used in cyberwarfare to take down both enemy infrastructure and websites that support the opposition.

DDoS is done for Ransom:

So Ransom campaigns may look very scary especially when they are followed by a huge DDoS Campaign. The tactic that the attackers use is to send the website owner an email that is followed by a small scale DDoS attack that can last for a short period of time. Some examples, of emails used in the Ransom Campaign are:

Example:

Hello!

If you don’t pay 2 Bitcoin, all of your servers will be attacked. Please note that with the 200–300 Gbps UDP flood power of our present attack, mitigation will not be simple. Presently, we just ran a small demonstrative attack on one of the IPs (Removed).

Don’t worry, it won’t be difficult because we won’t continue for 60 minutes and don’t want to crash your server right now. It is just a demonstration that we are serious about the attack. Make sure the payment should be in BITCOIN only and we understand that at this time we probably don’t currently have 2 Bitcoins, so we’re allowing you 24 hours to earn some and send us the money.

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So what to do when you see such an email in your inbox?

 The majority of the targets of this kind of extortion began to target financial institutions and Bitcoin exchange websites in 2014.But, now the campaigns have changed  and now threatens more websites with ordinary sizes.

From modest sums of money to enormous sums of money, the ransom rates to cease DDoS attacks are very variable. Bitcoins are typically used to pay the ransom.

Here a piece of advice is, never ever pay this ransom as the more money these malicious actors make with these types of campaigns, the more campaigns will be created and released.

The best course of action, as with all ransomware, is to set up backups and security before a website is attacked.

Ways To prevent Such DDoS Attacks:

Such DDoS attacks must be prevented by careful planning and appropriate security measures. It should be remembered that DDoS attacks can affect anyone, even if you own a small company that is obscure or unknown.

The majority of these attacks are the result of political motives, problems with a company’s reputation (such as when an oil spill results in an attack on the petrol company), or trolling.

DDoS attackers may even target small enterprises. There are numerous steps you may take to safeguard your company from DDoS attacks:

• Plan ahead: You must first create a DDoS response strategy, which entails looking through the system and addressing any security holes that may exist before establishing the company’s precise course of action in the case of a DDoS assault.
• Assign roles: Both in your network management or IT teams as well as in your data centers, you should have a well defined reaction team in place. Make sure everyone is aware of their responsibilities and who to contact if a matter has to be escalated, and provide a list of both internal and external contacts who may assist.
• Install security software: Make sure the proper security software is installed on your networks and applications. Firewalls, network monitoring software, anti-virus and anti-malware applications, as well as threat monitoring systems, are a few examples of important technologies included in this. These enable you to keep an eye on network baseline traffic and set up warnings for unusual activity.
• Updating everything is important: To ensure that there are no bugs or problems and in case there are these need to be fixed. All of these systems need to be maintained up to date. The easiest method to stop a DDoS assault from impacting your end users and essential network infrastructures is to identify threats as soon as feasible.

Tools that can Help Marketers and Brands Stop DDos Attacks

To prevent unwanted traffic from entering your network, DDoS protection software is created. Because there are so many distinct DDoS attacks that you could come across every day, each solution takes a different strategy. Following are a few tools and platforms that can help you in preventing DDoS attacks.

1. SolarWinds Security Event Manager:

SolarWinds Security Event Manager is for monitoring network activity and identifying threats before they overwhelm (SEM). SEM also helps to monitor the USB and file integrity so in case something is not looking good, it is able to stop its tracks.

Responding to the threat is essential, as security solutions that take too long to implement might quickly become ineffective. The SEM features automated reactions that can disable malicious devices or switch off their privileges, block suspicious IPs or USBs, and terminate apps that are acting strangely. As a result, dealing with something like a DDoS attack takes less time. SolarWinds SEM is offered for free for a thirty day trial and then you can choose the pricing options.

2. AppTrana:

Because it combines automated traffic attack mitigation with human analysts to improve defense techniques, AppTrana is the finest option for DDoS prevention. Indusface was named the Voice of the Customer WAAP 2022 report’s Customers’ Choice in all seven categories by Gartner Peer Insight.

AppTrana lessens the possibility of false-positive attack detections, which is something you wouldn’t want to happen if a sales promotion-related spike in traffic were to result in access being denied. A CDN, SSL offloading, vulnerability screening, and automated patching are just a few of the various site services included in this package. The more expensive model offers fully managed site security.

3. Cloudflare:

A reliable and scalable tool that combines many DDoS strategies to mitigate into a single solution is provided by Cloudflare. While preserving the functionality and high performance of the rest of your network, it blocks unwanted and malicious traffic from entering your network. Cloudflare monitors possible threats from attackers using a reputation database.

Cloudflare costs $200 USD per month for businesses, however for enterprises, you must request a price from Cloudflare.

4. Imperva:

High-capacity packet processing is used by the Imperva DDoS defense solution to protect the entire network from attack. Depending on your business’s needs, it offers either always-on or on-demand DDoS protection.

Furthermore, it has dashboards that are constantly updated with data about attack traffic. The Imperva tool’s significant disadvantage is that it can only defend against DDoS attacks. Learning how to defend against DDoS attacks is essential for your business’ safety and success in today’s world.

In order to avoid and respond to Possible attacks, it is recommended that every company should have network and data teams that completely understand how they operate. Such teams must also have a solid plan in place or access to tools like SolarWinds Security Event Manager.

Every company should have network and data teams who are completely aware of how DDoS attacks operate and have a well-defined plan or technology, such as SolarWinds Security Event Manager, in place to aid in preventing and responding.

5. Sucuri Website Firewall:

is a website application firewall that is capable of stopping DDoS assaults and zero-day vulnerabilities. Every HTTP/HTTPS request that comes into your service is examined by Sucuri Website Firewall, and any suspicious requests are prevented from accessing your service. This stops botnets from being able to take down your website.

Web application firewall, DDoS protection, Blacklisting, and Geoblocking are among the Key Features. Sucuri Website Firewall uses geo-blocking for added security. Visitors to your website from the top three countries for DDoS assaults are barred via geoblocking.

To prevent communication with your team from being restricted, you can white list trusted IP addresses if you just wish to moderately restrict access. Sucuri Website Firewall is offered in four different editions: Basic, Pro, Business, and Custom Solutions. The monthly price for the Basic edition is $9.99 (£8.19). The Pro edition, which supports SSL certificates, costs $19.98 (£16.39) per month. It is the best option for environments who need to safeguard their testing environments and applications.  It immediately begins mitigating/preventing DDoS attacks using basic guidelines and templates.  By IP, geography, traffic type, and behavior, users can block.

It also has a flexible price and is effective in both modest and big environments. It also has a drawback. The business Platform price tier is necessary for VIP assistance.  With additional capabilities, the Business version is $69.93 (£57.35) a month. On its website, which offers online chat support and more information about the Custom Solutions, which are customisable packages.

6. Link 11

A DDoS mitigation technology based in the cloud is called Link11. Layers 3–7 of the system can be used in real-time to identify and mitigate DDoS attacks on infrastructure and websites. Artificial intelligence (AI) is used by the program to identify an assault. Some critical elements are protection from DDoS at the network, transport, and application layers AI techniques.

The AI compares live usage with known attack pattern sequences it has analyzed. When a danger is identified, the platform can react instantly by sending an SMS message if a connection to the network is acting in a way that suggests it might be an attacker. Because Link11 runs on the cloud, it is very simple to set up and deploy. You may configure the platform to defend your network infrastructure from an attack in a couple of minutes without setting up any new hardware.

Attacks can be detected and mitigated using the monitoring dashboard, which gives you a centralized view of traffic, application, and server behavior. Easy deployment, AI usage, and a useful dashboard that shows server behavior  that you can observe what is happening. You can also create reports on security occurrences using the reporting tool. Depending on your demands, the application lets you manually create reports or schedule them. And finally, it blends simplicity and automation.

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Conclusion: The idea that DDoS assaults primarily affect huge corporations is frequently held among small companies. Every business is susceptible to cybercriminals’ operations because the majority of attacks are carried out by botnets that do not evaluate their targets before striking but rather strike in the dark.

In fact, the harsh reality is that a DDoS attack on your business might be ordered, for instance, by a rival who disregards the principles of fair play. So, using the top platforms and tools that can be used for DDoS attacks is crucial and you must choose the one that matches your business needs precisely.