Is it Possible for a Cyber Attack to Take Down an Entire Web Host?
📅 - You know cyber-attacks are something to be concerned about, but can they really affect an entire web host when they happen to someone else? In fact, entire web hosts can be affected by a cyber-attack. While you're sharing a web host with other websites and someone has a cybe-attack affect their site, you are going to be affected now too.
Even the most prominent web servers can end up being hacked and it's causing online businesses to panic about the possibility. This leads to the question of what could a smaller web host do if leading web hosts can't even prevent attacks 100% of the time? Cyber-attacks are rather devastating to servers affected but the best thing you can do is understand the threat and take steps to protect your clients by avoiding them at all costs. Take a look at the facts behind cyer-attacks and web hosts.
What to know about cyber-attacks
A cyber-attack is many times a DDoS attack or Distributed Denial of Service. This works where a server has a maximum capacity of bandwidth and the DDoS attack will flood the server to make sure it reaches capacity, giving any new visitors an error message that shows the site as unavailable.
This is making the site think it has visitors but they are fake visitors, preventing real visitors from accessing your web pages. The server doesn't recognized fake traffic because hackers are creative at making the traffic appear real to the server. This will then cut off your server from everyone else which means you are losing traffic and business.
How serious is this?
When your server as a web host is attacked, it's going to affect your customers that have web pages with you. If your customers host clients of their own, their pages will also go down. This ripple effect happens at a central location and spreads out from there causing the web pages it hosts and those tied to it to go down.
For websites that are purely based on informational purposes, this may not be too big of a deal yet. Financial repercussions come in when you run an e-commerce site or website that is used to convert readers to customers. When you host for clients and their sites go down, they may end their service with you losing you income. When customers can't access inventory, make purchases, or get company information, it could be costing that company a sale.
How can I avoid this?
As a web host, your job is to do everything you can to protect your web pages on your server. Provide proper bandwidth, use multiple servers to keep sites up and running, and investigate security software to identify attacks. Multiple modes of protection are best, from ensuring you have plenty of bandwidth to having security software in place to recognize an attack early on.
More bandwidth may buy you time as they begin to flood your server and you can take care of it before it's already flooded. In addition, when you run your own server, you can rate limit your router, set lower thresholds for ICMP, SYN, and UDP flood drops, or even cause half-open connections to timeout. Mitigation services can help monitor traffic on your web server to fend off attacks and small web hosts can contact their ISP to fight them off.
Take these steps to understand cyber-attacks and how to help avoid them. One attack could lose you in customers and income from a flooded server. Make sure you are properly protected before it's too late.
Even the most prominent web servers can end up being hacked and it's causing online businesses to panic about the possibility. This leads to the question of what could a smaller web host do if leading web hosts can't even prevent attacks 100% of the time? Cyber-attacks are rather devastating to servers affected but the best thing you can do is understand the threat and take steps to protect your clients by avoiding them at all costs. Take a look at the facts behind cyer-attacks and web hosts.
What to know about cyber-attacks
A cyber-attack is many times a DDoS attack or Distributed Denial of Service. This works where a server has a maximum capacity of bandwidth and the DDoS attack will flood the server to make sure it reaches capacity, giving any new visitors an error message that shows the site as unavailable.
This is making the site think it has visitors but they are fake visitors, preventing real visitors from accessing your web pages. The server doesn't recognized fake traffic because hackers are creative at making the traffic appear real to the server. This will then cut off your server from everyone else which means you are losing traffic and business.
How serious is this?
When your server as a web host is attacked, it's going to affect your customers that have web pages with you. If your customers host clients of their own, their pages will also go down. This ripple effect happens at a central location and spreads out from there causing the web pages it hosts and those tied to it to go down.
For websites that are purely based on informational purposes, this may not be too big of a deal yet. Financial repercussions come in when you run an e-commerce site or website that is used to convert readers to customers. When you host for clients and their sites go down, they may end their service with you losing you income. When customers can't access inventory, make purchases, or get company information, it could be costing that company a sale.
How can I avoid this?
As a web host, your job is to do everything you can to protect your web pages on your server. Provide proper bandwidth, use multiple servers to keep sites up and running, and investigate security software to identify attacks. Multiple modes of protection are best, from ensuring you have plenty of bandwidth to having security software in place to recognize an attack early on.
More bandwidth may buy you time as they begin to flood your server and you can take care of it before it's already flooded. In addition, when you run your own server, you can rate limit your router, set lower thresholds for ICMP, SYN, and UDP flood drops, or even cause half-open connections to timeout. Mitigation services can help monitor traffic on your web server to fend off attacks and small web hosts can contact their ISP to fight them off.
Take these steps to understand cyber-attacks and how to help avoid them. One attack could lose you in customers and income from a flooded server. Make sure you are properly protected before it's too late.
Reads: 1006 | Category: General | Source: TheHN : The Hosting News
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