How to Protect Your Website From Flooding Attacks

Owning and managing a website is not easy. For most modern business owners, having a website is something they view as a priority. Not only do you need to keep your website looking great, you also need to make sure it is secure.

Nearly 30,000 websites are hacked every day around the world. Hackers use an array of sophisticated attacks to infiltrate the backend of a website and steal sensitive information. HTTP flood attacks are one of the most common methods used to infiltrate websites.

Read below to find out more about this type of cyberattack and what can be done to protect your website.

What is an HTTP Flood Attack?

HTTP flood attacks are also known as distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS). The goal of this attack is to overwhelm a website server with a flood of HTTP requests. When this happens, the capacity of the web server is exhausted, which can result in it crashing. Ignoring the real threat that HTTP flood attacks pose can leave your domain vulnerable. There are a number of things you can do to manage flood control during these targeted attacks.

Lower Maximum Request Size

Creating congestion on the network and consuming the resources of a web server are the main objectives of cybercriminals that use HTTP flood attacks. One of the main things you need to do to avoid these attacks is to avoid accepting large amounts of data from API callers. By default, your maximum request body is around 30 MB.

Lowering this default setting significantly can help you mitigate the risks posed by large packets of data being sent to your web server. Changing this default setting will require programming and coding knowledge. If you’re unsure about how to use coding languages, then you can get programming help here.

User Authentication is a Must

Trying to let any and everyone use your website or web application is a horrible idea. Protecting the data on your website will require you to authenticate users. There are a number of authentication mechanisms you can use for your website. Username/password combos and API keys are just a few of the most popular methods used to authenticate website users.

Requiring the users of your website or web application to create an account can also help you track down the source of a hack in a hurry. Most people will have no problem creating an account to use your website if you have content that they want. Working with an experienced IT professional is a great way to lay the groundwork needed to start authenticating website users immediately.

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Don’t Forget To Update Security Software

The servers used to power modern websites are extremely sophisticated. There are many pieces of software used to make these servers functional and secure. However, this software can only do so much without proper updates. If you have an in-house team managing the servers used to power your website, you need to make sure they are uploading updates as they become available.

Failing to install these updates can result in your website becoming extremely vulnerable. Hackers will use the holes in outdated software to get into your site. When this happens, it will be difficult to seal up these vulnerabilities. This is why you need to focus on taking preventative measures to keep your website safe. Using cloud-based servers will help to ensure that updates are installed immediately.

As you can see, there are many things you can do to protect your website from flooding attacks. By implementing the tips covered above, you can keep your website functional and secure.