Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attackers continued to refine their techniques in 2022, while increasing the sophistication of their operations. Based on Microsoft’s report, here are the top tips to defend your organization against malicious attempts:
1. Evaluate your risks and vulnerabilities
Start by identifying the applications within your organization that are exposed to the public internet. Also, be sure to note the normal behavior of your application so you can respond quickly if it begins behaving differently than expected.
2. Make sure you’re protected
With DDoS attacks at an all-time high during the holidays, you need a DDoS protection service with advanced mitigation capabilities that can handle attacks at any scale. Look for service features such as traffic monitoring; adaptive real-time tuning; DDoS protection telemetry, monitoring, and alerting; and access to a rapid response team.
3. Create a DDoS response strategy
Having a response strategy is critical to help you identify, mitigate, and quickly recover from DDoS attacks. A key part of the strategy involves assembling a DDoS response team with clearly defined roles and responsibilities. This DDoS response team should understand how to identify, mitigate, and monitor an attack and be able to coordinate with internal stakeholders and customers.
4. Reach out for help during an attack
If you think you are experiencing an attack, reach out to the appropriate technical professionals, such as an established DDoS response team, for help with attack investigation during an attack as well as post-attack analysis once it has concluded.
5. Learn and adapt after an attack
While you’ll likely want to move on as quickly as possible if you’ve experienced an attack, it’s important to continue to monitor your resources and conduct a retrospective after an attack. Make sure your post-attack analysis considers the following:
- Was there any disruption to the service or user experience due to a lack of scalable architecture?
- Which applications or services suffered the most?
- How effective was the DDoS response strategy, and how can it be improved?
In case you would read more about DDoS attacks and how to protect your organization againsts them, you can download the ebook from Microsoft here.