Surviving Massive Cyber Attack, Is it Possible With Your Company?
Nowadays, no company is safe against cyber attacks because the technological balance of internet use is slowly tilting towards those people who want to make use of internet and its innovations for vile purposes. Many security companies and individuals with master’s degree in information security have already forewarned not only the government but also many private companies, universities and even those who have their own personal networking systems against the increasing threats in the internet superhighway.
These claims threats were never exaggerated and the possibility of DNS attacks is likely to happen. That is why it is important for the DNS industry as well as those companies employing DNS to look for ways to reduce the risk of cyber threats.
There has been a call for DNS Computer Emergency Response Team in order to reduce the risks of cyber threats. And the DNS-CERT many are clamoring for today will serve in the same lines as most CERTs that exist now. Since CERTs are made in order to respond on attacks made to the system which these CERTs are being assigned with. Some members of the private sector collaborated together so that they could setup the DNS Operations, Analysis and Research Center or the DNS-OARC. Its role is to allow different organizations and companies to share their data and together form better solution to secure their DNS. This is perfect for analysis before attacks could happen and sharing preventive practices, but still does not have the capabilities of coordination to respond against these attacks.
It is safe to say, that in our world of connectivity, the best defense against such attacks is the concerted coordination of the cooperating entities and individuals. The best example would be the Conficker worm that struck the internet back in 2008; many domain name registries across different countries has to work together with Microsoft and some security organizations so that they can slow down the further spread of Conficker and become a huge botnet threat. Then Kaminsky bug came along which made all vendors, researchers, backbone providers and registries cooperate together so that they can fix the fundamental flaw found in DNS – a flaw that allows cache poisoning. Because of their cooperation, it has spurred the DNSSEC’s deployment. In both cases, the solutions against the problems were only possible because of the cooperation of those involved.
There are many forms of cyber attacks nowadays, but there is one sneak attack that has been a continuous problem in the DNS industry and that is the Distributed Denial of Service attacks or DDoS. According to a master in information security, most reported DDoS attacks would rarely cause significant damages to average internet user, they can still result to long hours of server downtime, which would be a problem to the service provider and their customers as well as annoying to the internet user.
The threat of DDoS attacks increases as more and more residential subscribers of internet are given larger amounts of available bandwidth. One DDoS attack has almost reached 50 Gbps and that attack is beyond the capacity of most Internet sites and to some internet service providers. Thus, it is not surprising that DDoS attacks are the biggest concern of many companies. Luckily, these attacks won’t last more than 2 hours because the victims and their providers will work together to fix this problem.
One of the best methods to lessen the damages by large DDoS attacks is the use of IP Anycast. This tool can be only used by persons who have ms in information security because they are more knowledgeable and equipped to perform the tasks of Anycast. When they use this tool, the unwanted traffic caused by DDoS attacks will be spread out into multiple sites. But it all depends on the source and the distribution of the attack; in some cases, the attacks cannot be felt in some areas, while others suffer.
Anycast has been used in the DNS industry as well as CCTLDs against large-scale DDoS attacks and it has proven its resilience against attacks, making the company survive massive cyber attacks. But are you one of those companies who have no Anycast or not contracted to any DNS service with Anycast; then you might have a problem. The fact that cybercriminals are working hard to tilt their balance to their side means that your company has to work harder, collaborate and cooperate with other organizations, in order to be prepared and survive against the possible battle that will happen in your DNS.
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More information about master’s degrees in information security available at http://www.eccuni.us.