Having a good understanding of one’s information technology (IT) environment is a critical first step in mitigating the impact of distributed denial of service (D-Dos) attacks on a business, says network specialist company Networks Unlimited MD Anton Jacobsz.

A D-Dos attack is an online attack against the Web presence of a company to shut down the company’s critical services and affect its operations. Even if a company switches off its network to protect itself during such an attack, the instigators have achieved their goal of denying access to the company’s services.

Many companies are unaware of a D-Dos attack and may think it is a fault at their service providers or of the network carrier.

However, D-Dos attacks are common in South Africa and may be used to stifle a company’s capabilities during a critical time, for example, during product or service launches, or to hold the service for ransom. This is especially applicable during short-duration events, such as gambling events and services.

“There are illegal providers of these D-Dos attacks for hire that can target a company anywhere in the world. Though mostly of limited duration, these attacks often go unreported in a company, but the company is still subjected to the outage of its connectivity or of its services being affected. Any business that relies on a Web presence is at risk of such an attack,” he says.

The IT manager must have a comprehensive understanding of a company’s IT environment and network-wide traffic visibility to identify when parts of the environment fails to function inside normally operating parameters – called anomalies – as this should be regarded as a trigger to investigate the issue.

“Companies’ IT departments must have internal processes to adhere to during a D-Dos attack, which may include rerouting traffic to unaffected paths. IT managers should know where to block traffic to protect the point in the network that is targeted. However, most measures can only limit the impact of a D-Dos, not prevent it from affecting operations.”

However, the Networks Unlimited’s Arbor D-Dos solution and cloud-based services analyse traffic before it enters a company’s routing and switching environment and intelligently scrubs the data associated with an attack vector.

“The equipment detects data that is identified as a potential attack and removes this before passing the scrubbed, or legitimate, incoming data through to the company’s network environment. Our cloud service can also act as an upstream guard against D-Dos attacks before traffic is distributed to critical assets within a company,” says Jacobsz.

Companies must adopt a multilayered defence system to mitigate attacks and to prevent long-term impacts on their environments

“Technology alone is not sufficient to protect a network; companies must make a commitment to IT best practices, including having the right processes for bring-your-own-device IT environments, desktop security, malware, email vulnerabilities and end-user security education.

“There is no single magic bullet to reduce vulnerability, but Networks Unlimited does provide advice for customers on D-Dos attacks, advanced threats and network management,” concludes Jacobsz.