Building a strong and popular site is not as difficult as it sounds, but keeping it up at all times and keeping it safe no matter how much unwanted attention it gets, can be much easier said than done. Today, we are going to talk about site strikes, and we will tell you more about what a DDoS attack is and what you can do to prevent it and keep your page safe.
What is it?
When we think about website attacks, we tend to think that all of them are made to steal data and harm our brand in the worst way possible. Even though this can happen, and even though some brands can be targeted because of their popularity or the type of data they store, not all attacks are like that.
One of the most popular types of page attacks that is also one of the most common ones is DDoS. The abbreviation stands for distributed denial of service, and what this means is that the server is overloaded with traffic that it is not capable of handling and because of that, the site just goes down and it is non-responsive.
There are several different types of strikes that you may be subjected to, and some are going to harm your page more than others. The most common one is the application layer strike, and there are also protocol and volumetric attacks.
They may be too complex to understand, especially if you are not too tech savvy or if you don’t have any previous knowledge about DDoS attacks, and if you want to be able to fully comprehend them, it is best to talk to a professional or your server support and ask them to explain the different types in great detail and with giving your brand as an example.
Why does it happen?
There are several reasons why you may be targeted for this type of strike, and the most common one is that your page was just randomly targeted. Even if your site is just one day old and you are still figuring out your brand, you may get overloaded with traffic and your site may just go down.
Another cause for this may be your competitors, and it has been proven that about half of these charges happen because one company wants to bring its biggest competitors down. When the page is non-responsive, the end users are more likely to just go to the other most popular website that offers similar services, and they will take their business there.
In some rare cases, you may be specifically targeted because the hackers want to get a ransom from you. You may be notified that your site is going to get continuously overloaded with traffic until you pay someone a certain amount of money. This is close to someone holding your page hostage and until you accept their demands, your website is going to be down continuously.
Since the number one reason for the DDoS is your site being randomly targeted, the good news is that you can easily prevent these strikes. If you want to find out faster how you can do that, and if you want to see how specialized services can help you out with it, visit lightningcloud.net.
How to notice if your site is under attack?
Now let’s see how you can notice that your site is being attacked. Many of us believe that a sign of a DDoS is just when the page is down, but this is not necessarily true at all times.
If you can notice that suddenly there is a high amount of traffic on your site, and it is far greater than anything you’ve experienced before, you may be under attack. If you are not sure and if you think that the traffic can be organic, you should check the sources, and see if it is all coming from end users with similar traits. This can be the browser type, IP or even IP range, location, devices, and so on.
If your server is crashing all the time, and you cannot see a reason why that might be happening, it is highly likely that someone is targeting you. Note that you should not assume that you are under attack every time your server crashes, and you should first rule out other possibilities.
Finally, if you notice that your page is taking too long to load, if it is buffering, or if you need to refresh it several times to just get to the page you want, chances are, you are a victim of a targeted strike. The issues with loading time can happen for numerous reasons, but if you cannot find any other cause for this, you may want to talk to your server’s customer support and see what is happening and why.
How to prevent it?
There are several ways to ensure that this does not happen or to stop it while it is in the process of happening. The easiest way to do that is to just find the IP where the strike is coming from and block it. You can also use blackhole filtering that is going to remove and redirect all the potentially harmful traffic to a separate location and they won’t be able to access your page. The problem with this is that sometimes, safe end users can end up being filtered because you are doing the whole filtering process in bulk.
Nevertheless, the best way to prevent most of the DDoS attacks along with many other safety and security issues is to opt for a content delivery network and choose your page to be on a group of servers instead of just one.
This can help you out without you having to do any manual work, and it is going to keep your site going strong no matter who or how someone is trying to target you.
Now you know more about this and you may be able to keep your site safe and protected from harmful strikes.
Know that it is close to impossible to avoid and prevent every attack, but as long as your hosting server is reliable and trustworthy, and as long as you are using CDN, you are going to be far less likely to have your page down and to experience problems with your end users.
