What is DoS Attack??
The terrible story about how one single user could take down your service.
This kind of cyberattack (Denial-of-Service or DoS attack) is where someone or something consumes the bandwidth with data or/and floods a server by spanning millions of requests in a short time. The server and any service provided will become slow or even collapse, being unable to keep working for a time.
Now imagine you are going to your trusted cafe, where you expect great service and to have your favourite hot drink in less than 3 minutes, but before we can carry out your order, they receive a call from Steve Jobs or maybe someone from Tesla to order over 2000 hot drinks. At that moment, all the working staff there start to manage such orders that take them easily over 1 or 2 hours to commit, making them unable to serve your morning coffee or do it to any else for a while. Let's be more dramatic; imagine there is not any coffee around, that one would be your only coffee in the day, and it's MONDAY!!!
This sounds terrible, right? That is how a DoS operates.
What Does This Mean?
As a user, you will be unable to use this service, or it will work terribly slow and not able to give the service property.
But as a company, it could be much worse:
You will not be able to offer your service, therefore, your income will stop depending on your business model.
Your customers will feel betrayed by your service, and you may damage your reputation.
Customers may choose to use a competitor.
Your service may not be able to carry out critical actions.
A simple user or even a bot can become your day in a real nightmare if you are not prepared.
This event can also be caused by a malfunction of an API service implemented by one of our clients, where an infinite number of requests or a huge volume of data are sent to the server.
How Can This Affect My Businesses?
All your services will be slowed or stopped.
Your working team may be unable to do their labor for a while or finish their daily duties in time.
Your server service may use up all the contracted resources, requiring a new, larger investment.
Contracts may not be paid, and other procedures unfinished.
Employees may be required to work overtime to fix the faults, resulting in additional costs for pay.
Loss of trust and customers, which can severely affect your economic growth in the medium term.
How to Avoid It?
Fortunately, avoiding DoS attacks can be easy by the following strategies:
Implement Robust Firewalls: They will filter and monitor the incoming traffic.
Rate Limits: Restrict the number of requests a user can make to your server within a specific time frame.
Employee Training: Educating your staff about security best practices is always the top path to follow.