Cyber Attacks Are Up 24%: Here are 3 Ways to Secure Your Site Right Now

Remember when cybersecurity meant not letting anyone steal your floppy disks? Now, cyber attacks can topple entire companies overnight.

Shocking new statistics from an NTT Security intelligence report show that cyber attacks are up 24% globally as of 2017’s second quarter. In fact, a separate survey from the British government revealed nearly half (46%) of all businesses fell victim to a cyber attack between 2016 and 2017. This puts cyber attacks at an all-time high!

Never has business cyber security been more important than now. This is an affliction that affects businesses of all sizes, in all industries, all over the world. If you think cyber attackers only target large, international enterprises… think again.

Luckily, the situation isn’t as hopeless as it may seem. There are certain cybersecurity measures you can take to protect yourself and your company. If you’re tired of feeling vulnerable, make sure your hosting provider offers these 3 non-negotiable protection services:

1. DDoS Prevention

A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack occurs when a cyber attacker uses hundreds or even thousands of source IP addresses to overload your server, rendering it unreachable and causing downtime. A coordinated attack from this much traffic will either lock up the server (kernel panic or crash) or simply occupy all available connection slots so that legitimate traffic can’t get through.

Ensuring network and power uptime, along with offering readily available support, are the main responsibilities of hosting providers, so DDoS protection is a top priority.

We can’t speak for other hosting providers, but at Liquid Web, our DDoS protection starts with monitoring network traffic and using our exclusive Threat Detection System to identify suspicious behavior. Once identified, malicious traffic is scrubbed and separated before we take the appropriate countermeasures depending on the type of attack.

Free DDoS protection is part of all of our packages, but more advanced measures are also available for victims of especially large or complex attacks.

2. Blocking Malicious IP Addresses

The key to preventing most cyber attacks involves proactively blocking malicious IP addresses. Cybersecurity is about recognizing threats and separating harmful traffic from helpful traffic.

We use our Threat Detection System to monitor traffic for suspicious behavior so we can isolate potential threats and deal with them before they harm your site. Furthermore, most sites on any of the hosting platforms, including cloud sites, can pair up with Cloudflare to add an extra buffer layer of protection and ensure dangerous IPs never penetrate your vital data.

3. Responsive Customer Support

In the event of a cyber attack, you need a calm and knowledgeable guide to help you thwart the attackers, fix any damage, and restore server operations as fast as possible. Each hosting provider offers different levels of customer support, so choose one that’s both qualified and quick to respond.

When our client, Tucknologies, experienced a cyber attack, our reps came to the rescue without delay. Our support team deleted the offending files, located the scripts causing the problems, and salvaged the rest of the site. From there, we took the data from the attack to set up better, more informed defenses.

Tucknologies was just a small startup at the time, but their founder Craig Tucker was impressed by the dedication of our staff: “Liquid Web gave our company the level of support you would expect as CEO of a large established company.”

Takeaway

Don’t be another statistic! Cyber attackers are evolving every day, but so are our defense capabilities. Make sure your hosting provider has the most up-to-date cybersecurity services so you can sleep easy knowing your system is safe. To learn more about how Liquid Web goes above and beyond with its security measures, check out some of our security add-on services.