Is Your Business Ready For A DDos Attack?

Almost every business uses and relies upon the internet in some shape or form these days. With this comes a lot of opportunities, but it also means an open door for people to potentially attack your business. If you've heard of DDoS attacks but don't know much about them, then read on to learn what this threat is, what harm it could pose to your business, and what you ought to be doing about it.

What is a DDoS Attack?

A DDoS attack is also called a distributed denial of service attack. This is where multiple entities — or at least computers — all target your business's computers over the internet. Typically, these attacks come from individuals or small groups who use multiple computers over the internet — sometimes, those that have been taken over with a virus — to perform these attacks on systems like yours.

What Harm Can It Do?

The biggest problem with a distributed denial of service attack is that it disrupts your day-to-day business. 

Unlike other hacks, most DDoS attacks aren't intending to steal information or to destroy it, though it's ultimately up to the individual leading the attack. Instead, the intention is to prevent you and your business from being able to access the internet, and to prevent others from being able to access your website and services. It's something that can be devastating to a business, as all the customer knows is that your website is loading extremely slowly or not at all.

To better understand a DDoS attack, imagine you were running a grocery store and had a line of customers trying to get checked out. Suddenly, a hundred, thousand, or even more fake customers barge in and push their way to the front, blocking off access from real customers. That's essentially what's happening when multiple hackers or computers all attempt to access your network at the same time, over and over, for an extended period of time.

How to Be Prepared

A DDoS attack is something that many business owners don't even know is happening unless they have a cybersecurity expert onboard. Cybersecurity experts are the best at monitoring internet activity and identifying when an attack like this one is occurring. They can take steps to protect your data, the data of your customers, and to mitigate the attack so that the website still works, even while it's being bombarded with requests from DDoS computers.

If you don't have a cybersecurity pro at least on call yet, you really should. In this day and age, anyone can be targeted by a DDoS attack, and you don't want to find out that you're the target of one without any kind of protection. Reach out to a service that offer cybersecurity consulting to learn more.