DDoS attacks can be fatal for your business – learn to protect yourself

This week Milena takes a look at the recent cyber attacks businesses increasingly suffer from. 

DDoS attacks have recently been causing upheaval for many businesses. As some try to recover from the attacks and businesses become more aware of this threat, it is time to look for long-term solutions.

Gary Sockrider, principal security technologist at Arbor Networks, believes that: “Organisations should not focus on technology alone without paying some attention to people and process, which includes attracting and retaining talent with the appropriate skills, providing training and ensuring that knowledge is handed on.”

While it is vital to invest in functional firewall systems, discussing a plan in case of a possible disaster is also important. In this scenario, you not only need to have a realistic plan and procedure in place, but your employees need to be informed.

Your staff will have to manage the crisis by informing their customers and business partners of the event, getting computer specialists to look at the damage, arranging backups of information and recognising advanced persistent threats (APT) in the system network before hand. Ensuring staff can deal with the situation accordingly and mitigate future attacks requires appropriate crisis management training.

Not all companies might have the knowledge needed to provide the necessary training. This is where consultancies specialising in crisis management are an effective way to save on long-term costs from such advanced threats. It is especially useful for enterprise organisations who’s main selling material is distributed online and can thus lose out heavily through the disruption of internet facilities.

Because business continuity can include so many aspects, be sure you know what you as a company specifically need and keep yourself informed throughout the process what the long-term goals are of business continuity (obviously, keeping your business going and growing are the very basics of this). When choosing a consulting company, search for companies with past online security experience, as not all companies have this specialisation and you might be paying for an exercise or training not helpful to your company. Also ensure consistency and long-term results: you might be fed a plan that seems flashy and wonderful, just to find out after the consultant has left that it just doesn’t work.

This might all seem as if a vast amount of research and investment will be needed to prepare your business for future advanced threats. However, similarly with other aspects of your business – without initial investment and time you will just not see results. In the case of DDoS threats this means facing numerous threats with little capability to deal with them effectively. This, in turn, will leave you with little time and money to grow your market share while you’re busy trying to retrieve lost data. And at the end of the day, it’s better to be safe than sorry. It’s better to invest now and see your business grow credibility than invest in a startup that dies before it can flourish.