Countries like Portugal experienced an increase of 81% in the number of cyberattacks on their organizations. DDoS stands for distributed denial-of-service. It’s one of the most common cyber threats of the modern age.

The risk of such threats has existed since the beginning of the internet. However, it has never been greater than today. Over the past couple of years, businesses have witnessed an incredible innovation in the cybercriminal realm.

State-sponsored hacktivism, novel threats, and DDoS extortion dominate the cyber threat landscape, affecting millions of organizations, regardless of their size.



Akamai cyber incident

On July 21, Akamai, one of the leading content delivery networks (CDNs) for cloud security, software delivery, and media solutions, identified and prevented what experts characterized as the largest DDoS attack ever detected in Europe.

Hackers targeted a pool of customer IP addresses and used them to launch a massive global cyber operation against the Prolexic platform.

Cybercriminals have targeted the same victim, an Akamai client in Eastern Europe, for over 30 days, with 75 attacks. Hackers used every means available, including PUSH flood, FIN push flood, PSH ACK flood, TCP fragment, TCP anomaly, SYN flood, RESET flood, ICMP flood, UDP fragmentation, UDP, and more.

This unprecedented cyber incident indicates one obvious truth – modern cybercriminals have access to the most advanced, global network of highly-sophisticated hacking tools and bots.

They use these tools to develop a botnet of compromised and infected networks and devices. This botnet is their entry point into every European corporate network and internet-enabled device.



Prevent hack attacks by creating a cybersecurity strategy

Preventing cyber-attacks without the proper defenses is next to impossible. Even the most modern, sophisticated, and robust corporate networks stand no chance when attacked on such a large scale. The only way to mitigate an assault of this magnitude is to create a task force of processes, people, and cutting-edge technology to prevent the attack before it escalates.

Companies must take a proactive approach to cybersecurity and utilize the latest, industry-leading defenses to mitigate attacks and preserve their operations with no collateral damage.

Otherwise, they're bound to face the consequences such as legal ramifications, financial loss, decreasing customer loyalty and trust, and general downtime.

Here are some considerations for developing a cyber-attack mitigation strategy:

● Create a scalable cybersecurity platform with a dedicated defense mechanism that exceeds the capacity of the latest, largest publicly reported cyber threats.

● Hire as many experienced frontline responders across different locations as possible and put them in charge of solving cybersecurity problems and forecasting future attacks. We recommend hiring experts from the world’s top IT companies.

The internet is a vast digital business landscape with heightened operational risk. While it may present your company with numerous lucrative opportunities, it may also expose your operations to various threats. Therefore, you must have proven cyber-attack prevention and mitigation strategies.



Tips for preventing cyber attacks

While there’s no one solution to the cybersecurity problem, you can do certain things to mitigate any future attacks. Here are a few ideas:

● Lower DDoS risk by implementing the latest prevention measures according to Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) recommendations. Also, use DDoS security protocols and cloud-based cybersecurity service providers to develop the most effective mitigation and emergency scenarios.

● Keep all your systems and software up to date. Ensure endpoint protection to safeguard remote networks.

● Make sure you enable a VPN to hide your IP address. A VPN download brings an application that encrypts internet traffic and masks your IP address. Since an IP address is necessary to target users with DDoS, hackers won't be able to target you.

● Create separate longs for each employee’s personal account and check their credentials on every login session. Also, appoint system admins with managed admin rights to limit employee access to systems and networks.

Other tips include hiding Wi-Fi networks to secure them. Additionally, install robust firewalls to detect suspicious traffic. Backing up data also helps as it might help you revert any unwanted changes attacks bring.



Conclusion

No matter how sophisticated your cyber security measures might be, preventing cyber-attacks is an ever-growing challenge for small businesses and corporations. Most business leaders don’t even know where to begin with protecting their operations.

The internet offers so much information that it’s easy to lose count. However, we recommend taking your time and investing in high-end cybersecurity services for starters.

Most service providers will share free advice on the best cybersecurity practices and consult you on the best ways to protect your operations and sensitive data.

It’s vital to stay in touch with the latest trends in cybersecurity and cybercrime to learn how to recognize and mitigate threats before they do some damage.