POSTS TAGGED: sean_leach
Sean Leach | Feb 28, 2013
As businesses continue to move critical operations online, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are increasing in frequency, sophistication and range of targets. In a 2011 Verisign study, 63% of respondents reported experiencing at least one attack that year, while 51% reported revenue loss as a result of downtime from the attack. Those numbers are undoubtedly higher today as the size, frequency and complexity of DDoS attacks continue to grow. Mitigation against these types of attacks is challenging and generally requires layered solutions across data centers and the cloud management. The success of these attacks and their ability to damage a company’s infrastructure, revenue and reputation is indicative that many IT managers still haven’t found the right protection formula to proactively mitigate them.
A DDoS attack occurs when a “botnet” (a group of compromised computers) is used to send an overwhelming amount of "bad traffic" to an intended target, such as a company’s website. Computers can become “bots” when they're infected with a virus or other malware through a compromised website or malicious email. This usually happens completely behind the scenes with the user having no idea their PC is part of a botnet. The botnet is directed by a botnet command and control that tells all of the bots who/what/when/where and how to attack. The target of the attack usually spends so much time trying to handle the bad traffic that legitimate visitors, or customers, are crowded out and unable to get to the site.
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Sean Leach | Oct 06, 2012
As a website owner, the last thing you want is for your site to be used to compromise your visitors' computers and mobile devices, but unfortunately, it happens all the time.
There are more than 3,500 new pieces of malware that infect more than 30,000 websites every day. Enterprises spend thousands of dollars per year on cybersecurity and web monitoring solutions to help make sure that their web sites are up and fast, but often have no monitoring in place for Web malware. The reality is that serving Web malware is far worse for your brand reputation than your site being down because it actually causes harm to your most beloved asset - your customer base.
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Sean Leach | Jan 27, 2012
If I could describe DNSSEC in one word, it would be "important." Another word that often describes it though is "complex."
What is DNSSEC and why is it so important and complex? Well, DNS, as you may know, is a little known (but absolutely critical) technology. It enables connections on the Internet by translating the better known domains we all use to the IP addresses that get us to the pages we want. Without DNS, the Internet doesn't work. Cryptography has a similar lack of visibility, but is also absolutely critical. When you mash the two of them together, you get Domain Name Security Extensions, commonly called DNSSEC.
DNSSEC provides a manner of guaranteeing that an answer from the global DNS is the correct answer - which as you can imagine is pretty important (i.e. if I type in the domain for my bank's website, I sure hope the IP address my browser goes to is of the intended bank, not some nefarious middle man trying to steal my data. This is what DNSSEC helps solve). I say DNSSEC is complex because there are terms associated with it like "zone signing," "key rollover," "algorithm strength," "data enumeration," etc. That's a LOT of terms to know just to be able to have a secure domain.
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Sean Leach | Oct 31, 2011
While distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are nothing new, in the last year, we have seen larger, stealthier, more targeted and more sophisticated attacks than ever before, elevating the growing need for DDoS protection for companies of all sizes that conduct business online or are highly dependent on their online brand and reputation.
A denial-of-service (DoS) attack occurs when traffic is sent from one host to another computer with the intent of disrupting an online application or service. A DDoS attack occurs when multiple hosts (such as compromised PCs) are leveraged to carry out and amplify an attack. Attackers usually create the denial-of-service condition by either consuming server bandwidth or by impairing the server itself. Typical targets include Web servers, DNS servers, application servers, routers, firewalls, and Internet bandwidth. The following five tips can help you protect your online assets from a DDoS attack.
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Sean Leach | Oct 04, 2011
If your network went down for five minutes, what would the impact to your business be? What if it went down for an hour? A day?
A recent survey commissioned by Verisign found that more than half of mid-sized and large enterprises with dedicated IT staff have experienced network downtime in the last year. Sixty-five percent of those downtime incidents were attributed to Domain Name System (DNS) failures and/or cyber attacks. Surprisingly, those with larger IT budgets, more website visitors and a dependency on their websites for more than 50% of their annual revenue were more likely to say they experienced downtime from a DNS failure.
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