Denial-of-service (DoS) attacks have been a major problem for Internet sites. Distributed denial of service or DDoS can completely bar access to Internet for an organization and hinder its productive operations. DoS is normally a malicious attempt to make a networked system unusable (though usually without permanently damaging the system). DDoS attacks typically involve multiple computers and send repeated requests to a server to load it down and render it inaccessible.

If you have been a victim of distributed denial of service before and want to protect your network from such attacks, you need to be aware of the right DDoS solutions and the importance of professional help for DDoS protection.

IT security teams in most business organizations rely on conventional security products such as firewalls, intrusion prevention system (IPS) and web application (WAF) devices for DDoS protection. Though these devices are essential elements of sound security strategy, they simply are not made to impede modern day DDoS attacks.

IPS devices, for instance, are typically devised to block break-in attempts that cause data theft. Meanwhile, firewalls act as policy enforcers to prevent unauthorized access to your business data and services. While such products are critical security tools, they fail to address a fundamental concern regarding distributed denial of service attacks—network availability.

Firewalls and IPS solutions fail to be effective anti DDoS devise as they are built to protect against known threats and not emerging ones. Further, they are designed to look for threats within single sessions and not across sessions.

Another shortcoming of firewalls and IPS solutions is that they are deployed in wrong location – these are too close to server to protect upstream router.

A firewall, especially a newer application-layer one, must track all connections to understand the context of all incoming packets, and an IPS device must track state to proactively stop intrusion attempts via signature-based detection, stateful protocol analysis and other detection methods. If a network is still facing issues even after blocking the offending IP through a software based firewall application, it is strongly advisable to install a script that can automatically look for multiple offending IPs.

Firewalls and IPS devices must be augmented with purpose built DDoS protection.
For problems that still get out of hand, it is best to consult a professional hosting company to get rid of troublesome distributed denial of service attacks.