Distributed denial-of-service attacks are one of the top threats facing organizations today. These attacks overwhelm networks, servers, and applications by flooding them with bogus traffic, making real requests unable to get through. The result is a denial of service to legitimate users and customers.
Key reasons why ddos attacks are increasing
- Expanding attack surface area – The growth of cloud computing, the Internet of Things, and mobile devices vastly increases the number of possible points for attackers to target and also use as botnet nodes.
- Greater attack scalability – Advancements in botnet malware and the expanding attack surface allow adversaries to stage extremely large-scale attacks exceeding 1 Tbps much more easily.
- Profit motive – Cybercriminals have realized DDoS serves as an effective ransom vehicle. Threatening denial of business services gives perpetrators leverage for extorting money.
- Revenge goals – Angry customers, disgruntled employees, or hacktivists launch DDoS strikes purely out of a desire for vengeance or protest. Insurance against this motive is prudent.
Fortunately, there are steps you take right now to validate your risk and start protecting your organization.
Test your network against ddos with an IP stresser
How do you proactively gauge the resilience and real capacity of your network security defenses? The most effective approach is subjecting your infrastructure to benign “stress tests” that simulate real DDoS attack traffic. Specialized IP stresser solutions provide an efficient and controlled way to do this.
how to use a stresser? An IP stress testing service launches high volumes of junk traffic against your systems from vast networks of servers around the globe. This effectively mimics a real DDoS event, but allows you to measure performance impact safely. Running stress simulations also verifies the proper configuration of your denial-of-service protections and uncovers any weak points.
- Benchmark bandwidth capacity and utilization to right-size hardware needs
- Validate security controls to stop various attack types before attackers strike
- Uncover blind spots like neglected servers, forgotten hardware firewall rules
- Familiarize IT teams with monitoring and managing high-volume attacks
- Meet regulatory compliance demands for risk assessment and preparedness
By revealing your true capacity and vulnerabilities in advance, proper IP stress testing builds confidence to withstand real DDoS campaigns.
Start protecting your organization now
You clearly can’t ignore the rising DDoS threat. The risks of business disruption, financial damages, and reputational harm grow daily. Every organization should be evaluating and shoring up defenses immediately using these best practices:
- Run IP stresser simulation testing to benchmark defenses and uncover gaps. Remediate issues that testing reveals.
- Implement a specialized DDoS mitigation solution, either on-premise or cloud-based. This should screen both network and application-layer attacks.
- Ensure ample internet bandwidth and scrubbing capacity through providers to counter large attacks.
- Create and maintain emergency DDoS response plans to facilitate fast decision-making and coordination if you suffer a real event.
- Provide cybersecurity awareness education to employees. Training helps them spot social engineering tactics, malware intrusions, and suspicious network activity tied to DDoS.
- Stay vigilant with threat monitoring and information sharing across the industry. Adapt defenses as new attack vectors and IoT botnets emerge.
Following these guidelines goes a long way to ensuring your organization minimizes disruptions from the inevitable DDoS incidents in the future.
