DDoS threat makes PC security critical

Businesses must take steps to protect themselves from DDoS attacks – or face potential ruin

The number and size of organisations to have suffered a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack over the last few years shows that businesses must take steps now to protect themselves from DDoS attacks – or face losses of thousands of pounds and perhaps complete ruin.

A spate of DDoS attacks have been carried out, often at critical times for the business under attack. The attacks are often designed to extort money from the business, but there are several different reasons why a company would be attacked by DDoS.

DDoS attacks bring websites or networks to a complete halt, meaning legitimate users cannot use them. They do this by bombarding the site or server with information from other computers. Often, the other computers’ owners do not realise that their PC is carrying out the attack – a hacker will create an army of zombie computers (known as “bots”) by secretly infecting them with DDoS software before co-ordinating the attack.

PCs attacked by DDoS hackers 300 times a day
It has been estimated that a home computer can come under attack up to 300 times a day by different hackers trying to infect it with the DDoS software before they attack someone. Relatively few attempts succeed, but a network of 1,000 bots would be able to wreak havoc on many large organisations’ networks.

TV network Al-Jazeera, search engine Yahoo, the Daily Telegraph’s website, the online payment service WorldPay and several British online bookmaking firms have all been seriously affected by DDoS attacks since the start of the decade.

DDoS strike timed to have maximum effect
In the case of the bookmakers, their websites were taken out of action by the DDoS attacks just before the Cheltenham Gold Cup – one of the most heavily gambled-on races in the betting calendar – suggesting that the strike had been timed to have maximum possible effect.

The firm in question was given the option of paying several thousand pounds to the attacker or losing many thousands more if they didn’t.

Of course, no-one likes the idea of paying the blackmailer – and there is no guarantee giving in to the demands will end the attack.

Take steps to combat DDoS threat
However, businesses can take steps to protect their networks from DDoS attacks – and the continued threat makes it more critical that they do so.

Webscreen is an IT network security technology designed to protect web servers and other network appliances from a DDoS attack. Its unique Guarantee of Service (GoS) technology lessens the impact of denial of service DDoS attacks and lets IT managers maintain access for critical system users and important customers during periods of high network activity.

ebscreen also includes a range of network optimisation and monitoring tools to help deliver maximum performance from your network infrastructure resources. To find out more, call 0870 3890022.