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DDoS Attack and How it can Affect Your Company?

April 5, 2017 by Brent Goedel
Copeland Buhl

A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is an attempt to make an online service unavailable by overwhelming it with traffic from multiple sources. They target a wide variety of important resources, from banks to news websites, and present a major challenge to making sure people can publish and access important information.

The most recent DDoS in the media was the attack on DNS provider Dyn. This attack was apparently enabled using the power of Internet of Things (IoT) devices. What is IoT?  IoT is any device that has the ability to gain online access. We won’t get into listing everything that is categorized as IoT, but Gartner, Inc. reports that by 2020 there will be 20.8 billion devices on the internet.

So you ask yourself, how does this affect my company and how do I protect against it? For starters, making sure you have a firewall that is properly configured to only allow the traffic that is needed inbound and outbound of your system. The biggest reason for any attack is not having your systems up to date with the latest updates or patches. A vulnerability scan of your network can determine if you have any vulnerabilities and how to resolve them. Making sure staff is aware of these issues and have the knowledge about what to look for when working with emails and the internet is vital to protecting the security of your network.

To learn more about our firewall and network security services, contact Brent Goedel at Beyond I.T. Advisors or 952-476-7142.