DDoS attacks: why protect your organization?

What would happen if you lost your Internet access during business hours following a security incident? What would be the financial or operational impacts of such an incident? What would it do to your reputation? It is crucial to consider the potential consequences ahead of time to avoid having to deal with unpleasant effects on your organization activities.

The answer isn’t quite so simple. You need to look at the Internet as a public space that will always come with its fair share of risks, just like streets and highways, for example. In each of these cases, adopting good behaviours and vigilance helps significantly reduce the risks of unfortunate events. However, in the case of roads, we have no control over other drivers’ behaviours; as a last resort, the car at least provides some physical protection. Certain models even come with advanced security features. This is also true for Internet security. The firewall protects your local network from the outside world, with different security options.

Even if your network is perfectly secure, there is still a certain amount of risk. Intrusions do not necessarily occur only on your network.

Using a new generation firewall with unified threat protection is the equivalent of having a hyper-controlled physical barrier. Imagine your organization’s parking area, protected by barbed wire, with a security guard posted at the entrance. No one can enter or exit without authorization. However, it is possible for a malicious person, seeing that they can’t get in, to block the entrance with a semi-trailer, preventing all traffic from entering and leaving the premises. In the computing world, this is the equivalent of a denial-of-service (DoS) attack.

A bad actor could also use what is known as botnets (a network of zombie computers) that work remotely when the attacker invokes them, unbeknownst to their owners. These botnets flood a destination (a website, for example) with superfluous requests that prevent legitimate traffic from reaching said destination. This type of attack is known as a “DDoS” (Distributed Denial of Service) attack. Given that there could be several thousands of sources, if not more, such an attack can be very difficult to contain.

A DDoS attack can use several hundreds of gigabits per second, and the target’s Internet access becomes completely flooded with illegitimate traffic, thus putting it out of service. Even if there was no intrusion in your network, the outcome could be similar. Oftentimes, this type of attack occurs at a crucial time for the targeted organization, such as before or after a major media event.

It is sometimes possible to change the client’s public IP address in order to stop an attack. However, if the attacker is targeting a domain name that is essential for the client’s operations, this change would be useful to them, as the DNS servers would redirect all traffic to the new IP address.

DDoS attacks are increasingly complex and common. Such attacks can significantly slow down a network and hinder the organization’s activities. According to a NetScout report on DDoS attacks, there were more than 7 million DDoS attacks worldwide in the last two quarters of 2023 alone.

A firewall with DDoS protection comes too late in the Internet’s distribution chain. The damage has already been done if the unwanted traffic has already reached it.

Today’s virtual threats require advanced protection that uses a mitigative approach at the limit of the backbone network, before your Internet access in the Videotron Business core network. Combined with data intelligence capacities, our DDoS protection service operates within our Internet backbone network and significantly reduces threats by avoiding congestion of your access. Plus, it allows a per client threshold adjustment, so as to facilitate the identification of legitimate traffic in the event of an attack.

Our completely scalable and autonomous solution offers network traffic analysis and detection and mitigation of DDoS threats to ensure your business continuity.

Protect yourself today, and avoid the negative and costly effects of an attack on your organization.