What Can Companies Do to Stop a DDoS Attack?

By Dan Rowinski / July 4, 2011 7:01 AM 

Beef Up, Team Up and Black Hole

The simplest way to survive a DDoS attack is to build your own data centers - like Apple, Google, Amazon or Microsoft - that can handle any amount of traffic. Most big corporations (not to mention small and medium businesses) do not have the ability to scale the way the Internet giants do. Apple built a 500,000 square foot data center worth about $1 billion in North Carolina that was finished in April. But for other companies, building their own data mammoth data centers is not an effective use of resources.

"About the only thing to do is beef up or go into a cooperative," said Chester Wisniewski, a security researcher and blogger with Sophos, in a recent interview. "That is the advantage that small and medium business have with being in a giant cloud. They pay a small amount for the data they use yet have all the benefits of being in a massive data center."

"Companies can set up a cooperative in their region or industry," Wisniewski said. "Set up a protocol to distribute infrastructure that could withstand 1,000 times to 5,000 times their traffic in an attack."

Cooperatives essentially form a networked cloud which allow companies to cordon off the attack and stream it into a "black hole" where it is not longer affecting their servers.

Wisniewski said anti-DDoS companies such as Damballa Security, ServerOrigin and Arbor Networks purchase extra bandwidth that can be used as an elastic option if a company is being targeted.

"DDoS attacks are a risk so it is really like buying insurance," Wisniewski said.

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