Can a Website Monitoring Service Really Prevent a DDoS Attack?

As we've mentioned in previous weeks, all sites are at risk of a DDoS attack. Your site may not be the target of a hacktivist group like anonymous, but there are hackers out there who have no moral agenda and just like to wreak havoc because they can. Should one of these hackers set their sights on your website, are you ready to handle it?

The Role of a Website Monitoring Service

A website monitoring service cannot actually prevent a DDoS attack. What it can do is notify you when performance problems with your site begin to occur. An outage due to a DDoS attack doesn't usually come from out of nowhere. Usually there are signs prior to the website actually going down and those signs are directly tied to website performance. If your website monitoring service notifies you that your site is having performance issues, a DDoS attack may be at the root of the problem. Being notified when the symptoms of such an attack begin and before an outage actually occurs can buy you the valuable time you need to prevent the outage from occurring altogether.

How to Stop a DDoS Attack from Taking Down Your Site

Just because your web host says it will protect your site from DDoS attacks, that doesn't mean your host actually has the technology needed to stop today's more sophisticated attacks. In addition to website monitoring, you need to have DDoS protection in place. There are cloud-based solutions that can handle application and bandwidth attacks by scaling up your website's capabilities. There are also services out there that will actually go to work to thwart the attack itself. Make sure that in addition to a website monitoring service, you have DDoS protection in place should your site come under attack. The website monitoring service will be your first line of defense, letting you know the attack is happening. Then you can notify your anti-DDoS service provider to let them know an attack is occurring so they can go to work to stop an outage from occurring.

Making Sure Your Ducks Are in a Row

Every minute of downtime can equate to lost profits. You want to make sure that a DDoS attack doesn't actually bring your site down and cause those profits to be lost. If you don't yet have DDoS protection services in place ,make sure you add them to your anti-downtime arsenal. You may not need to use it, but if the worst-case scenario should happen and an attack should occur, you can have the peace of mind in knowing that your website monitor and your DDoS protection will work together to protect your site.