UPDATE: 3 DDoS Misconceptions That Could Leave You Vulnerable

Editor’s Note: The original article (posted below the line) was published on November 20, 2014. An update on the subject matter was sorely needed….

Now that you’ve educated yourselves on the misconceptions of DDoS attacks, let’s get down to real numbers in this update.

In a recent study performed by B2B International (and funded by Kaspersky Labs), DDoS attacks cost large businesses an average of $444,000 in love revenue, subsequent IT spending.

You can read the survey here, but let’s go over some of the highlights:

While the above figure was for large businesses, much like when this article was originally published, not just large businesses are affected by DDoS attacks.

The survey concluded that nearly 1 in 5 businesses (regardless of size) that were polled suffered from a DDoS attack during the year-long study.

To protect yourself from DDoS attacks in the future please read the article below and mitigate your DDoS risk to ensure your company is protected from the expense of a DDoS attack.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Original:

If you’re like me (and hopefully you’re not) then you probably think you’re not even remotely close to suffering from a DDoS attack. And that could be because I don’t host anything or have any type of server out there, but if you’re reading this you most likely do, so I’m going to tell you why you may have been led down the wrong misconception concerning DDoS attacks and why you should be ever vigilant of them.

It seems that the tech-based news industry is really only concerned with security breaches, data being stolen, or celebrity nude pictures that probably shouldn’t have been on the internet in the first place but were. But something that gets lost in the midst of all this is the susceptibility to a DDoS attack. You know, the type of attack that floods your server leaving it broken, battered, and tired—unable to perform the most basic functions of its existence. And people seems to have the wrong frame of mind when it comes to them—and that’s a huge concern.

Don’t Let The Propaganda Get To You

So, with the help of our good friends at datacenterknowledge.com, let’s take a Colocation America look at some DDoS misconceptions!

Why Not All DDoS Attacks Are Put in Motion to Consume Bandwidth

The first thing most people think of when they think DDoS is clogged bandwidth. And they’re not that wrong about that. It’s a messy business and one would need a virtual Mike Rowe on a virtual show of Dirty Jobs to clean all the goop and gunk from the pipes of your server after a DDoS attack. But don’t think that’s the only thing DDoS attacks can affect. That’s right, they can be molded (ever so craftily by some guy in a basement somewhere that has so much fancy tech equipment you start to wonder why he’s living in a basement in the first place….) to attack, say your entire system and all of its applications. That’s right—all of them. What are you going to do about it, slugger?

Well, be aware that the size of the attack traffic is just one of many aspects that can tell you how bad the attack actually was. Don’t confuse your SYN flood attacks with your UDP flood attacks, now. Where a SYN flood attack are the kind that attack your bandwidth, UDPs affect all that other stuff. Many people believe that an SYN attack is more dangerous than a UDP, but they both pretty much suck.

How DDoS Attacks Don’t Have to Happen All at Once

Again, most people (who are these people? Get out of the hive-mind mentality most people. Jerks.) believe that DDoS attacks are quite rapid and they hit you like snow has been hitting Buffalo, NY recently. Seriously, have you seen that? Geez. Makes you want to put your servers in some places that are a little warmer, eh?

Anyways, DDoS attacks can be rapid, but some can be more quiet like. Smacking you in the face little by little until you don’t have a face anymore. The rapid type of DDoS attack is called an RST (tired of all these initialisms, yet? I am). These are probably the type of attack that’s mentioned the most when talking about DDoS attacks. But like mentioned above, some DDoS attacks move at snail speed. Spreading their slime all over your precious data until you have to bring out the salt—and you know that means the end of your garden (data in this analogy).

These attacks chip away, sending requests to their targets consistently which occupies the resources for a great length of time—mashing, ripping, clawing, biting, burning through your data. It’s a slow and painful death and one that you should be just as aware of as those other quick-strike DDoS deaths.

Why Even if You’re Not a Big-Name, You’re Still At Risk of a DDos Attack

This one seems simple, but humanity’s hubris is nothing to scoff at. Unless you like to attack people DDoS style. Then you take advantage of it not unlike cats take advantage of everything you do for them but give very little back except stink, scratches, and bites. But back to technology. Everyone is at risk for a DDoS attack, even if you’re not a big-name with big-time servers.

Think about it. Those big names have all the best (hopefully) security in place to deal with this type of thing and it still sometimes doesn’t work. That’s awful! What about your tiny server with those puny little firewalls and whatever else you think if protecting you? Well, what about them? Boom they’re dead.

Just be careful out there. And if you want to host your server in a place where DDoS attacks are taken seriously try this place here (yes, it’s a shameless plug, I’ll admit it).

For more information contact Q.C. Crea