Today’s DDoS attacks have become every network’s problem. Powerful computing platforms, high-bandwidth connections, global reach, and the easy availability of “how-to” toolkits for conducting DDoS attacks make it easy to wreak havoc. Attackers can create their own botnets, exploit flaws in internet enabled devices, or rent them to achieve any type of attack that they want—only limited by their imagination and motivation.

DDoS attacks are also more diverse than in the past. They might target a specific vulnerability and throw massive amounts of traffic at it. They might conduct a “drip campaign” using very little traffic over a sustained period of time that suddenly results in system or application crashes. Some DDoS attacks are used as a “smokescreen” attack on one area of the network to divert attention and resources from a second location that they compromise through malicious methods. For the enterprise, this knowledge is worrisome. But there are ways to preempt attacks and know in advance how your infrastructure will function in the event of a DDoS attack.