Distributed denial-of-service attacks seem to have become a dime a dozen, thanks in large part to Anonymous, which last year released simple DDoS tools, including Low Orbit Ion Cannon. Businesses don't have to sit idly by waiting to become the next victim, however, writes InformationWeek's Mathew J. Schwartz, who spells out 10 steps to reduce the impact DDoS attacks can have.

The first two steps are to recognize that pretty much nobody is immune from the DDoS threat and that the attacks are easy and cheap to conduct but hard to combat.

Steps three and four involve preparing for attack by fortifying your network and finding the weak links and bottlenecks. Be sure your infrastructure can scale to deal with traffic spikes. The fifth step is to keep a close eye on the network, which means have clear visibility into the traffic.

Next, take note that not all attacks are going to be the classic Anonymous packet flood. Most DDoS attacks last year involved less than 1 Gbps of bandwidth. What's more, attacks at the application layer can be highly effective but hard to detect. If more than one application is targeted--or if an application and packet flood attack are launched together--it gets even more difficult.

The ninth step is to work closely with your ISP, making sure you know who to deal with at times of attack.

Finally, there may be countermeasures you can take, but be careful not to overstep the law.

For more:
- see Mathew J. Schwartz's article at InformationWeek

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