The Rising Risks of DDOS Attacks in Kenya: What to Do

In the wake of advanced technology, cybersecurity has been an issue of concern for many businesses, not just in Kenya, but also across the globe. Many businesses have succumbed to various types of attacks with the consequences of being too grave to comprehend. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) is just but one of the endless attacks that have continually risen, claiming many businesses in Kenya. Sadly, most businesses and organizations don’t seem to understand what DDOs attack entails, and even those who have a clue about it, tend to ignore it until it’s too late. This post will examine what you need to know about DDoS attacks, and what you should do in case you experience one in your data center. Don’t panic — there’s always a solution!

Risks Associated with DDoS

 First things first! Let’s take a look at some of the risks associated with DDoS:

• Financial risks through the loss of company revenue
• Remediation risks coupled up with recompensation of the affected customers
• Legal and other economic consequences imposed on service providers who fail to meet their SLAs
• Unseen risk factors such as the company’s reputation and the brand as well.

What to Do in the Event of a DDoS Attack

The superiority of these consequences continues to escalate even as a high number of companies continue to grieve significant losses. The question remains! What do you do in the event of a DDoS attack? Let us have a look.

1. Increase your Bandwidth

One of the most basic ways to curb and prevent falling victim to the DDoS attacks is making sure that your bandwidth is sufficient and in plenty to control fluctuating web traffic that is brought about by the malicious attacks. How does this help? In the past, it was possible to control the DDoS attacks by increasing the bandwidth which the attackers lacked. This made it almost impossible for them to plot an attack. However, the amplified attacks today render this solution almost null and void. The only way this solution will work is by raising the bar with which the attackers have to work through to overcome for a successful DDoS attack.

2. Equip your infrastructure with redundancy

Increasing the redundancy of your servers is probably one of the most effective ways of preventing and controlling the adverse effects of DDoS attacks. How? This solution involves spreading your servers across various data centers located in different regions within the country or even multiple places in the world. Equip the data centers with a sound load balancing system which helps in the distribution of traffic amongst them. For this strategy to work effectively, make sure that the different data centers are not connected to the same network. Run through the system to check for any small mistakes that could fail the system. How will this help? Decentralizing your servers will make it quite difficult for an attacker to be able to attack your servers. In any case, if one server falls victim to the malware, you can rest assured that the remaining servers will be able to take the extra traffic launched by the attacker.

3. Set up your network hardware to prevent DDoS attacks

 A few configuration changes to your network hardware can make a significant impact when dealing with DDoS attacks. One of them includes blocking UDP port 53, which consequently prevents the DNS responses which are outside your network. You can also achieve security through configuring your router or firewall so that they both block any ICMP packets coming your way.

4. Keep your DNS servers safe

 Your DNS servers may also fall prey to a malicious actor who is into bright your web servers offline. For this reason, it is also significant for you to decentralize your DNS servers, making sure that you locate them in different data centers with load balancers as well. Making them redundant is crucial to fighting this epidemic. For better results, if you are looking into decentralizing your DNS servers, why not turn to DNS providers who are cloud-based. These providers offer unrelenting bandwidth as well as multiple locations for your in data centers located all over the world. You can rest assured that these services are designed to prevent the effects of DDoS.

5. Install protection appliance for DDoS

 Various security vendors offer a variety of tools which are designed to block attacks by DDoS even before they happen. They include Cisco, Radware, Fortinet, and Check Point, to name a few. These appliances work by blocking traffic by known attackers, or carrying out a behavioral assessment and then blocking unnecessary traffic. However, this approach has a few shortcomings. These appliances can only handle so much traffic. Some devices, especially the high-end ones, can be able to handle up to 80Gbps. But looking at today’s DDoS, you can expect a magnitude greater than this.

6. Install both anti-DDoS hardware and Software components

Just like any personal computer antivirus, your servers should stay well protected by firewalls, especially the more enhanced web firewalls. It is also advisable to use load balancers. While purchasing your hardware, keep in mind the software protection against the DDoS protocol they offer. They work well in foretelling the number of incomplete connections existing and flushing them when that number reaches a certain threshold. A good example is the SYN flood attacks.

Conclusion

However complex the DDoS appears to be,  the malicious actors who launch these attacks need limited bandwidth for them to be able to achieve numerous attacks on their prey than they could do by starting their attacks on the victims directly. For this reason, finding the right solution to keep your servers safe is key to preventing insurmountable risks. Perhaps some measures sound more convincing like anti-DDoS hardware and software components, infrastructure redundancy, and so forth. Regardless of the control measures, you seek to deploy, be sure that they work to your favor. DDoS attacks can be scary. What you need to do is invest in a highly specialized professional to handle your system security – from consultation to virtualization to actual implementation.  almiriatechstore Kenya is your one-stop for everything tech. Our team is skilled in all matters to do with data center set up and maintenance. No DDoS attack will occur during our watch. Contact us today for personalized services.