Protecting a Website from DOS Attacks
A DOS attack is an attack on a single computer or network of computers to make the computer or network, unresponsive. DOS stands for denial of service. It is named so because, when a DOS attack occurs, the computer or network is unable to provide service efficiently. There is a DOS attack and there is also a DDOS attack which stands for delivered denial of service attacks. These attacks are alike in terms of the disruption they cause to a computer and its network. Both the attacks can be very devastating to any network. DDOS and DOS attacks can be set up in a way that those who have pla ed the attack would not be identified or traced. Some types of DDOS attacks include teardrop attacks, flood attacks, IP attacks and peer-to-peer attacks. The most common target for denial of service attacks are big time online businesses and service providers. In the event of a denial of service attack, these revenue generating websites are suddenly flooded with an overwhelming amount of data command inputs in their websites, eating up all their web hosting bandwidth and causing the entire server and the network to go down. As a result, the denial of service attack causes both direct and indirect damage. Direct damage would include loss of business transactions, increase in costs of network fees and decrease in revenues. The indirect damages would be connected to the reputation of the company and loss of customers. Obviously, denial of service attacks can greatly affect a company. However, fortunately,
these attacks can be mitigated or even totally prevented should the proper preventative measures be ensured. There are a number of ways to protect computers and networks from these harmful attacks. Getting a DDOS protection system or intrusion prevention system could help greatly. These systems are made to act automatically, as soon as an DDOS attack is identified. Two common types of intrusion prevention systems or IPS are ASIC based IPS and rate-based IPS. The ASIC based IPS work like circuit breakers. They use powerful processing power to find DDOS attacks and stop them before they attack the network. Rate-based IPS works by checking the network’s web traffic. If it finds any irregularity in web traffic, it filters out this traffic to block DDOS attacks. To get a good IPS, one should do a lot of reading and online research to know which IPS are reliable and which ones are best suited for their network. Aside from these dedicated DDOS prevention systems, there are other ways to mitigate chances of attacks. One can set up firewalls to allow and deny access of certain harmful packets, sent to the network. The use of switches can also help. Switches regulate the amount of web traffic that goes through a website, to assure that the network can protect the bandwidth from getting too flooded. Just like switches, routers can be configured to regulate web traffic that goes through it. When it comes to protection from denial of service, one should think of all the ways, one can protect one’s website from a DOS attack.