Early in June 2022, Cloudflare detected and stopped the largest HTTPS DDoS attack on record. The attack was detected and mitigated at 26 million requests per second (rps) and has been given the name Mantis due to it originating from a small but mighty botnet. The attack used 5,067 IoT devices across 121 countries to send 26 million requests per second, a shockingly low number of devices to produce a high level of traffic.
Over the past year, Cloudflare has witnessed continuous record-breaking DDoS attacks on business networks and servers worldwide. Many businesses are reevaluating their network security to help prevent such attacks from threatening their operations. What is an HTTPS DDoS attack, and what can you do to keep your business safe?
What is a DDoS Attack?
A Distrusted Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is a malicious attempt to flood the network of a targeted server, network, or service with extra internet traffic. Every network or business website has limits on the amount of online traffic it can handle. Commonly, the limit is much higher than needed to continue operating effectively and seamlessly.
A DDoS attack takes advantage of the network’s capacity limits on any resource, such as a company’s website, and sends multiple requests to the targeted resource. These requests exceed the server capacity to handle multiple requests, resulting in the targeted website being unable to function as normal.Â
DDoS attacks effectively use multiple compromised systems, such as IoT devices, computers, and other network resources, as a source of traffic for the attack called a botnet. By overwhelming your network resources, the botnet prevents you from utilizing your online resources’ services and hinders your business’ operations. DDoS attacks can be both frustrating and costly to manage if they can infiltrate your system.Â
Protect Your Business from DDoS Attacks
You can take a few security measures to help protect your network. You first want to ensure you and your team understand the basics of network security. Some of the standard best practices include strong passwords, phishing awareness, and adding firewalls. Maintaining firewalls helps prevent unauthorized access to your network.Â
While more secure than no security measures, protecting your network further requires advanced measures to be taken. You need to set up security to prevent your firewall from failing by keeping your systems updated and incorporating a DDoS response in your business continuity plan.Â
Another way to protect your business from DDoS attacks is to use the cloud for more aspects of your business. The cloud is better equipped to handle these attacks with its larger bandwidth and security in place explicitly designed to minimize the impacts of a DDoS attack. These basic security measures can help to protect your network from being targeted by a botnet.Â
We can Help You Expand Your Network Security
Reach out to learn more about your network security needs and how we help with your daily IT management. Give us a call at 954.474.2204 today.
