Cyber and DDOS – What is it?

We saw in a recent blog from “The Professor” how cybercriminals could create a network of controlled computers to propagate a “BotNet”. One of the malicious reasons for these powerful networks of control is so that the hacker can perform “Distributed Network Attacks” (DDA’s). We all have experienced this at some level and the outcome is not good for enterprise, corporations, or businesses of any size. DDA’s create disruption even to our own home operations.

A DDA is sometimes referred to as a Distributed Denial of Service or DDOS attack. This virus or network of virus’s attacks behind the scenes to take over system resources. A DDOS could attack switches, hubs, routers. It sometimes will flood the network backbone with nuisance transactions with the intention of sucking up all the bandwidth that might otherwise be necessary for day to day operations. DDOS can bring to a screeching halt the web sites for processing claims, or even shopping cart interfaces for the purchasing of products. Attacking web servers so that they cannot function allows the attacker to hold the network hostage. The hacker then demands payment from business owners big and small. There have also been reports of DDOS attacks from competitors of large corporations.

Once they bring the company or operators to their knees via the technology, end users will have no hope of realizing value from those web sites. Any and all online services are at risk. In the late 1990’s this type of attack was on the rise. Today there are safety nets. EVERY system and computer should be armed with some type of security scanner. Most DDOS attacks can be stopped with programs that protect against them. The security apps that you have to protect your domain servers, of course, are different from those on other systems and then the security we use on internet enabled devices differ even more. The key is to protect EVERY network enabled device and be sure to UPDATE those apps frequently. You know that as soon as we can combat one type of attack, the cybercriminal has already thought of or launched new ways of attacking networks and systems.

Wait there is more…

In addition to reactively protecting your systems and networks, how much more resilient and enabled would a business be if they were to build in and arm the code in development against cyber-attacks. How much better would it be to build rugged code, integrate testing early in the process (shift left) and to proactively prepare for security. Many companies are integrating their functional teams with DevOps initiatives. They are looking at requirement gathering in a whole new light, and instrumenting their tooling for continuous integration and continuous delivery of SECURE resilient products and services.

Inspire and Educate: Agile, DevOps Test Engineering, and ITSM training and Certification

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