About DDoS attacks

A distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack is when a number of servers on the internet bombard a target website or server by sending extremely large numbers of requests. The result is that the website can’t respond to legitimate requests, or the target website responds so slowly that it is effectively unavailable. The target website (and the network it is hosted on) is unable to cope with the volume of requests and denies the service to others trying to access it. 

A hacker achieves this type of attack by taking advantage of security vulnerabilities or weaknesses on website and servers and then uses those websites for the attack.

Can I prevent a DDoS attack?

While you can secure a server and your web content, this will only prevent your server from being used in a DDoS attack. It is not possible to prevent your server from being targeted by a DDoS attack.

There are steps that can be taken to help mitigate the risk and to better manage these attacks when they do happen. We use advanced technologies to detect and block these attacks on our network and infrastructure and are able to absorb very large attacks without any observable affect to our customers websites.

While we protect our servers and infrastructure from attack, customers are responsible for securing their individual websites against attack. This can be done through the use of protective applications such as Cloudbric WAF.

What is the impact of a DDoS attack?

The DDoS attack impact varies, depending on the size and nature of the attack i.e. the number of servers that are used to launch the attack and how effective the attack is at consuming all available website or server (and network) resources. The impact can vary from a single website being slowed or down for a few minutes or hours, to an entire network feeling a significant effect of the attack.