By DR Goyal, Vice President, RAH Infotech
2021 saw an immense increase in the number of DDoS i.e Distributed Denial of Service attacks. This was an obvious development considering the sudden push businesses received due to the pandemic. With no choice other than to shift to a remote work environment, businesses ran into several cybersecurity risks and DDoS attacks were one of the biggest threats to the organizations. Most of the organizations still functioning on traditional i.e legacy infrastructure were at the receiving end of the attacks. But experts in the industry post several analysis reports that have decoded the change in the attacks.
The number of DDoS attacks has reduced in 2022, but they are now more evolved and sophisticated not just with the technology but also in their targets and techniques. Digital transformation from legacy to cloud is also creating a space for new vulnerabilities which is only giving more ammunition to the threat actors.
- Ransom DDoS attack has seen an increase by 175% each quarter
- Credential stuffing is the new type of attack which is an alternative to the typical DDoS attacks
- Application-layer DDoS attacks are the target technique used by threat actors, especially against the manufacturing vertical and network-layer attacks are the next technique
- Threat actors are now resorting to repeated and short attacks
- Multi-vector attacks i.e combing different DDoS attacks, are being used with increased frequency
- SYN flooding is gaining popularity with HTTPS flood and mixed attacks with HTTP elements
- Implementing the right in-house or hybrid DDoS prevention service complementing the current or transitioning technology infrastructure
- Deploying network and web application firewalls
- Continuous monitoring of network traffic
- Experts dealing with DDoS attacks against Layer 7 need to be consulted
- Understand the bandwidth and server capacity to absorb and mitigate DDoS attacks
- Integrate load balancers that will protect and minimize the vulnerable areas for attacks
- Outsource response teamwork for providing quick and timely resolution against the attacks
- Educate and train employees and the tech teams on cyber hygiene