DDoS: A Growing Threat
DDoS attacks have been a growing threat in recent years. Major botnets have grown larger and more numerous, and the availability of automated DDoS software has made it possible for anyone to perform a DDoS attack. As a result, DDoS attacks have become a pressing threat to organizations of all sizes. These attacks can have significant impacts on an organization, including operational disruption, financial losses, and reputational damage.
The Stages of DDoS Mitigation
The goal of a DDoS mitigation solution is to identify and filter out attack traffic intended for a target system while minimizing the potential impact on legitimate users. A DDoS mitigation solution commonly implements a four-stage process, including the following:
- Detection: A DDoS mitigation effort begins with identifying a DDoS attack. This includes being able to differentiate between an actual attack and a large volume of legitimate traffic, such as a surge of visitors to an e-commerce site on Black Friday.
- Routing: DDoS attack traffic is targeted at a system that can’t handle it and needs to be rerouted to a location that can scrub the attack traffic. This is typically accomplished using BGP routing or changes to DNS entries to point visitors to the DDoS mitigation solution.
- Filtering: Once it reaches the DDoS mitigation service, the traffic is filtered for the malicious DDoS traffic. This involves differentiating between legitimate and malicious traffic — based on detecting bots, unusual behaviors, etc. — and blocking the malicious traffic while allowing the legitimate traffic to continue on to the intended destination.
- Adaptation: DDoS attacks are often an evolving threat, and DDoS mitigation solutions must also adapt to identify and manage the latest threats. During an attack, the solution should collect information about the attacker’s tactics that can be used to improve its ability to identify and filter DDoS attack traffic in the future.
DDoS Mitigation Techniques
An organization can mitigate a DDoS attack in a few different ways with varying infrastructure requirements and impacts on legitimate traffic. Some common DDoS mitigation approaches include:
- Blackholing/Null Routing: Blackholing or null routing directs all traffic to a service to a fake IP address. This causes all traffic to the service — both legitimate and malicious — to be dropped.
- Sinkholing: Sinkholing is a more targeted form of blackholing. Instead of diverting all traffic, it uses a list of known-bad IP addresses to determine which traffic to send to the blackhole. However, this method is ineffective if the source IP address of the attack traffic is spoofed, which is common in DDoS attacks.
- Scrubbing: Scrubbing involves inspecting traffic to identify and drop packets believed to be attack traffic based on various factors (size, content, source, etc.). This is the most effective and targeted form of DDoS mitigation, but the additional processing it requires can increase the latency and resource requirements of DDoS mitigation.
DDoS Mitigation Services
A DDoS mitigation service provides an organization with the capabilities that it requires to protect against DDoS attacks. This includes routing DDoS traffic to DDoS scrubbing centers, identifying and filtering out DDoS traffic, and routing the traffic to its intended destination.
A DDoS mitigation service should also come with certain guarantees. For example, the solution should be able to scale to address even large-scale DDoS attacks and should provide reliable, high-performance protection to ensure that an organization has the DDoS mitigation capabilities that it needs when it needs them.
DDoS Attack Mitigation and Protection
DDoS attacks pose a serious threat to organizations of any size and in every industry. As DDoS attacks become easier and cheaper to perform, cybercriminals are targeting a wider range of organizations with large-scale DDoS attacks. These types of attacks can have a variety of impacts on the business, including financial losses, reputational damage, and operational disruptions. To learn about your exposure to DDoS attacks, sign up for a free scan.
The best way to manage the DDoS threat is to implement a DDoS mitigation solution that can filter even the largest attacks. Find out more about what to look for in a DDoS mitigation service and how to choose the right DDoS solution. Check Point DDoS Protector X provides companies with enterprise-level protection against DDoS threats. Stay vigilant, continuously assess your security measures, and leverage reliable DDoS protection solutions to ensure the resilience of your infrastructure.
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