Is your business prepared against a DoS attack? Read 9 guidelines

The National Cyber Security Centre says the number of Denial of Service (DoS) attacks increased in October.

The number of DoS attacks has been increasing this autumn. The National Cyber Security Centre received more reports of attacks than in previous months.

A DoS attack is one in which a criminal tries to prevent access to a service by disrupting its operations. The attack may be carried out by overloading a web server or exploiting a vulnerability in a service or network device. The National Cyber Security Centre says a significant share of DoS attacks are distributed, in which the traffic is sent from many sources at the same time.

The National Cyber Security Centre points out that a DoS attack does not require great technical competence, as an attack may be bought on the dark web relatively inexpensively.

Read the National Cyber Security Centre’s instructions here.

How to prepare against a DoS attack

1. Write an incident management plan for your organization in case of DoS attacks.
2. Also offer regular employees basic training which advises them on how to act when a DoS attack paralyses the company’s services.
3. Learn in advance how to notify the National Cyber Security Centre of a data security breach.
4. Start following the National Cyber Security Centre’s press releases.
5. Review various attack scenarios with the company’s management and agree on practical measures and allocation of responsibility in the event of a data security breach.
6. Launch continuous management of vulnerabilities and updates.
7. Identify your company’s business-critical components. Write and maintain lists of sites to be protected.
8. Precisely define the necessary user privileges.
9. Consider establishing a Security Operations Centre (SOC) or buying one as a service. The purpose of an SOC is to monitor your business’s web traffic and its systems’ data security incidents.