DoS and DDos Protection Systems
Service providers like those of high-profile servers—including those of the gateways to credit card payment and banks—are often the targets of DoS and DDoS attacks. DoS attack or "Denial-of-service" attack is a form of cyber-attack wherein the attacker aims to make the services of a high-profile target inaccessible to their clients and customers. This type of attack can either have a partial or total effect of denying the services of the high-profile servers, and for this reason, this type of attack has far-reaching negative consequences on the target servers. DoS attackers achieve such partial or total denial of the services of their target servers by flooding the resource or machine of the servers with too many requests.
The distributed denial-of-service attack or DDoS attack, on the other hand, is a more virulent version of DoS attack because the sources of traffic flooding the servers come from various origins making it more difficult for the server’s security system to detect where the attacks are coming from. In DoS attacks, the attacks are prevented by simply blocking the source of the attack which is usually a single source. On the other hand, in DDoS attacks, the website's security system would have to block various modes of entry, making it quite difficult to immediately contain the DDoS attacks.
Because of the possibility of DoS and DDos attacks, many web servers and websites have to rethink their network policy control systems to ensure that they would be able to stave off any brewing and incipient DoS and DDoS attack. They have to make sure that they have, in their security systems, installed a network anomaly detection system that would alert them if there is an anomalous increase in the number of incoming requests that may be indicative of an incipient Dos or DDoS attack.
A good analogy of how DoS and DDos attacks are very effective in crippling the services of a network providers or servers is that of a crowd of people that are all trying to enter a cramped door at the same time. Because of the intense desire of each person in the crowd to gain access to the door, most of them are denied entry into the door. There are some possible reasons why cyber-attackers may engage in DoS or DDos attacks, and some of these reasons include those of blackmail, revenge, or even activism.
There is an increase in number of DDoS attacks in the recent years, wherein the perpetrators of the attacks usually make use of various IP addresses from they would stage their attacks. Some of these DDoS attacks often target the application layers of the operating system. These types of attacks often over-extenuate the capability of the functions of the website with the view in mind of disabling these functions. Any unwary server or network can fall prey into these types of attacks; hence, it is critical that networks and servers have countermeasures against these types of attacks.
Some networks do not have the “in-house” capability to ensure and mitigate the effects of DDoS attacks. More often, they need help from third-party service providers that have the expertise on how to avert and stave off DDoS attacks. With the knowhow and expertise of these third-party service providers, network providers and servers can configure their security systems in such a way that their networks and servers would be almost impervious to these types of cyber-attacks.