At-DDoS protection refers to the practices, tooling and strategies used to help prevent, detect and mitigate DDoS attacks. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks come in several forms, each designed to exploit different vulnerabilities in a target’s network infrastructure and services. Understanding these attack types, how to prevent them, and how to mitigate them quickly and effectively, should be part of any good security program.
Having the right tooling and strategies in place for adequate anti-DDoS protection is a critical initiative for any organization doing business online.
Why is anti-DDos protection important?
The consequences of DDoS can be devastating without adequate security measures and strategies in place. Without a robust anti-DDoS strategy, a business has to contend with the following realities:
Revenue impacts. Every minute of downtime means lost earnings from customers who cannot purchase products or access services on a company’s site. Prolonged or repeated attacks add to massive costs that damage your bottom line.
Hindered normal business operations. Operational delays, canceled orders, and stalled projects harm productivity and satisfaction. When certain services are unavailable during an attack, it becomes challenging to run your business.
Reputational damage.
Customer dissatisfaction. Customers expect consistent and reliable digital experiences. A DDoS attack resulting in website downtime reflects poorly on your brand. It may cause them to lose trust in your business and switch to competitors.
Increased security risks.
Increased vulnerability exposure. When attacks overwhelm your existing security program, it can expose additional vulnerabilities that hackers can further exploit. This elevates risks of data theft or network infiltration even after the DDoS ends.
Exposure of sensitive customer data.
What are anti-DDoS protection best practices?
It is important to have anti-DDoS best practices in place in order to prevent DDoS attacks. Here are some common best practices that help reduce the risk of DDoS attacks:
Know the signs: Understand the top 4 signs of a DDoS attack
Top signs typically include unusually slow network performance, unavailability of specific websites or services, a surge in random traffic from a single IP or geographic region, and server crashes or system shutdowns. Your anti-DDoS protection strategy and tooling should be able to quickly identify these four key signs of a DDoS attack:
Slow network performance. If you suddenly experience unusually slow network speeds both on internal systems and when accessing external websites and services, this could mean a DDoS attack is eating up your bandwidth. Attacks aim to overwhelm available internet pipes, so performance will lag across your entire network footprint.
Website unavailability. One of the common goals of a DDoS attack is to force websites offline. If your business’ main site or internal tools become inaccessible or respond very slowly, it's a clear sign you may be under assault. Having customers or your workforce unable to load pages is also an indicator.
Increased traffic from specific IPs. Your network monitoring should be configured to track traffic patterns and volumes. A rise in traffic originating from specific IP addresses, especially short bursts that don't align with normal usage, could indicate an attack in progress.
Inexplicable outages. Unexplained frequent or prolonged periods of downtime related to your website(s) or internal systems may also suggest that an attack is taking place.
2. Implement a multi-prong security approach
Defending against DDoS attacks requires a multi-pronged approach combining proactive measures and reactive strategies. While completely preventing DDoS attacks may be challenging, organizations can significantly mitigate their impact by implementing a solid defense plan. DDoS mitigation best practices in your security program should include:
Monitor traffic patterns. Your first line of defense is constant monitoring. Install tools to analyze website traffic 24/7 and alert you to unusual spikes or changes. By spotting anomalies early, your team can investigate and stop bots or potential attacks before they can cause any damage.
Use a Web Application Firewall (WAF). WAFs like Fastly’s Next-Gen WAF sit in front of your web servers, filtering requests for signs of malicious activity. They can stop bots and detect and block common exploits like SQL injection or cross-site scripting before they reach your applications. By preventing harmful traffic, Fastly’s WAF protects you from dealing with disruptions after the fact.
Implement rate limiting. No system can handle unlimited traffic indefinitely. Set access thresholds using edge rate limiting, so abnormal traffic volume is managed automatically, without impacting normal users. This ensures your website(s) remain responsive for genuine customers during periods of increased traffic.
Use a content delivery network (CDN). CDNs ensure that websites remain available and performant, despite any traffic fluxes or attacks.
Employ IP blacklisting. You also have the option of banning specific IP addresses known to cause problems. Keep records of addresses engaged in questionable traffic patterns and automatically reject their future requests. This denies bad actors the ability to disrupt your business's operations. Better yet, get an anti-DDoS solution that does all of this for you, automatically.
Conduct regular security audits. Review your defenses periodically. As threats evolve, so should protections. By scheduling security audits, your business can ensure tools remain up-to-date and appropriately configured to safeguard operations.
Establish an incident response plan. Even the most robust measures may not prevent every attack. Have a detailed plan prepared if issues arise, so your team can respond rapidly and minimize any impact. With a process ready to execute, you can address disruptions efficiently and continue serving customers.
Use a DDos solution: The best possible approach you can take for anti-DDoS is to implement a dedicated DDoS solution.
What anti-DDoS solutions are there and how should you use them?
DDoS risks require a multi-pronged approach to security - no single solution completely protects you from them. That said, a modern platform like Fastly can bundle together various DDoS capabilities to keep you secure. A modern approach to DDoS should include:
A CDN and a WAF, to protect you from the edge.
Rate limiting and bot detection solutions to protect you at the application layer.
Anycast and scrubbing capabilities, at the network layer.
Monitoring and auto-scaling to ensure resilience, even under attempted attack
More specifically, these are the categories of protection you should consider for DDoS protection. Many powerful solutions will bundle all or most of these capabilities:
Network-level protection involves stopping huge floods of traffic before they overwhelm your servers. This is usually handled by services like a dedicated DDoS solution or a CDN which sit in front of your infrastructure and absorb or filter massive traffic spikes.
Protocol-level protection focuses on blocking attacks like SYN floods. This is typically handled automatically by modern cloud platforms or hardware/software firewalls.
Application-level protection involves stopping illegitimate users who are masquerading as legitimate traffic. This includes things like bots hitting your login or API. Web Application Firewalls (WAFs), combined with bot protection solutions are particularly effective here.
Traffic scrubbing means sending your traffic through a large filtering network that removes bad requests before they reach you. This is exactly what providers like Fastly do, they act as a shield in front of your servers and “clean” incoming traffic.
Caching and CDNs reduce how much work your servers have to do by serving content closer to users. CDNs cache your content so attackers can’t easily overload your origin servers.
Redundancy and scaling is about making your system hard to take down even if some traffic gets through. This is done with load balancers, auto-scaling groups, and multi-region deployments, so your app can handle spikes instead of crashing.
Monitoring and detection helps you spot attacks early and enables you to react quickly. Dedicated security solutions can help identify suspicious traffic and flag it before it becomes a problem.
Luckily, Fastly’s platform provides the majority of this functionality, offering a CDN, WAF, bot management and DDoS protection, all in one.
How can Fastly help?
Maintaining comprehensive security against DDoS attacks presents major challenges in terms of cost, complexity, false positives, evolving threats, and resource intensity. However, Fastly's cloud-based DDoS protection solution directly resolves each of these concerns.
The key benefits of Fastly’s DDoS Protection include the following:
Lowers Costs: Fastly offers cost-effective DDoS protection, which is included with its CDN services.
Flexible payment options: let you choose the package suited to your needs, with unlimited overage protection. Consolidating with a single vendor for security, CDN, and edge cloud services is the more affordable choice.
Simplifies Complexity: Fastly's solution requires no complex setup or manual tuning on your side. The network automatically absorbs layer 3/4 attacks, while the next-gen WAF seamlessly handles Layer 7 threats.
Reduces False Positives: Fastly's advanced SmartParse detection engine accurately classifies requests while minimizing the false positives that could block real users.
Continuously Evolves: Fastly enhances detection and mitigation based on solid intelligence, letting you stay ahead of evolving global attack trends.
Resource Efficient: Fastly's massive network has a built-in capacity to absorb even extraordinary attacks without performance impacts. Automated edge mitigation also reduces the origin load.