News article posted on: 29-10-2019
How Can You Prevent A DDoS Attack?
Knowing what a DDoS attack is and how it can be prevented is essential for websites—no matter their size. Keep reading to find out the impact of DDoS attacks and how hosting providers can ensure their servers are protected against this digital threat.
WHAT ARE DDOS ATTACKS?
Distributed Denial of Service Attacks—commonly known as DDoS attacks—are designed to prevent customers from reaching your website. In best-case scenarios, a mild attack may only cause a webpage to take longer to load. However, in a digital business world centred on efficiency and speed, any server downtime can still be incredibly costly.
Regardless of who your hosting provider is, the server responsible for handling your website will have a finite amount of resources. As long as internet traffic remains within those allocated resources, the server will be able to process access requests as usual. When the network resources are overloaded, the server's response is slowed down. A DDoS attack is when hackers or fraudsters attempt to overload the capacity of the server hosting your website by using a "zombie network" of computers.
Imagine your website as a retail store on the high street. As long as you have enough staff to process the customers coming through the door, sales will continue. If, suddenly, the store becomes bombarded with hundreds of customers who want to cause trouble, then loyal shoppers will be shut out as the staff becomes overwhelmed. The principle is the same in a digital environment. In the case of a DDoS attack, the store is your website, and the workers are the different network resources allocated to a server.
LOSING CLIENTS TO A DDOS ATTACK
DDoS attacks are designed to prevent clients from visiting your website. While it may only be a temporary inconvenience, several seconds is all it takes for clients to take their business elsewhere. If the DDoS attack is particularly severe, a server can be unavailable for days, sometimes weeks.
This "total denial of service" damages customer confidence, prevents access to your services, and may lead to the attacker requesting payment before the DDoS will end. For any successful e-commerce site to thrive, they need to not only know what a DDoS attack is, but how it can be prevented—that’s where hosting providers like Versio come in.
HOW YOU CAN PREVENT DDOS ATTACKS
For small or emerging e-commerce sites, it can be difficult knowing what needs to be done to protect against the risk of DDoS attacks. Many articles talk about systems checklists, response plans, and costly third-party applications. While these measures are undoubtedly helpful, there is a much simpler alternative—choosing a hosting provider whose servers are already protected against DDoS attacks.
VERSIO USES NaWas TO PROTECT ITS SERVERS
All of Versio’s server packages include NaWas (National Scrubbing Center against DDoS attacks). Protecting over 45% of Dutch internet domains, NaWas is an "on-demand service to combat DDoS attacks in the Netherlands and the rest of Europe". The service is provided by non-profit organisation NBIP (The Dutch National Internet Providers Management Organization).
To help explain how NaWas works, we need to head back to our retail store analogy. This time, instead of staff becoming overwhelmed with customers, NaWas is there to act as bouncers—vetting customers before they come in. Legitimate clients are allowed to enter and explore the services or products on offer, while trouble-makers are turned away. NaWas ensures any traffic visiting your site is "scrubbed" before it is routed back to the hosting provider via a separate VLAN.
You needn’t worry about preventive measures or response plans, as the hard work is done for you. NaWas ensures DDoS attacks are minimised for total peace of mind.
