DDoS Protection and IoT Networks

With the growth of IoT, potential bots are everywhere, ready and waiting to be recruited and leveraged in an attack. Depending on an attacker’s goals, your devices could be used to attack others or turned against your network, leading to network compromise and potential data loss or theft. 

To prevent these consequences, your organization must prioritize DDoS protection. Effective protection tools can reduce your risk of attack, helping to prevent downtime and revenue losses. 

The DDoS-IoT Relationship

Internet of Things (IoT) devices are everywhere, and they are typically poorly secured. Many people purchase one of these devices but never change their login credentials. Sometimes, default credentials wind up on the dark web, and attackers can then use these to access unsecured IoT devices. Once they have accessed the devices, they can recruit them to botnets.

This has been a significant contributor to the growing size and intensity of DDoS attacks. Using these botnets, attackers are able to launch DDoS attacks against applications and websites, and these attacks are very difficult to disperse once they start. Another rising trend is DDoS-as-a-Service, in which the owner of the botnet sells its services.

IoT devices are not only targets for botnet recruitment. They can also be targets of DDoS attacks themselves. Because of the security weaknesses in IoT devices, they are easy targets for attacks that intend to overwhelm the servers to which these devices connect. If your organization has IoT devices, you are at risk of a DDoS attack through them.

Managing IoT DDoS Risks

It’s unlikely that your organization’s IoT devices are going anywhere. With that in mind, your first priority is to ensure that you have changed all default credentials of each device that connects to your network. Once you’ve addressed that most obvious weakness, consider the following strategies for securing IoT devices against infection and being targeted for botnet recruitment.

• Edge-based traffic filtering and analysis. Security solutions at the network edge are essential for limiting the amount of malicious activity that is able to reach access points and potential vulnerabilities. Use WAFs or WAAPs to filter bot traffic and limit the reach of malicious actors. 
• Device-level anomaly detection and response. Bots have consistently become more evasive with the passage of time, so even the most sophisticated WAF might not catch every single attack. To bolster security, implement solutions and frameworks for anomaly detection at the device as well as around the network. 
• IoT gateways. These connect each IoT device to the cloud, but they also improve security for the device by encrypting the transmitted data. 
• Network segmentation. While attack prevention is imperative, it is not always sufficient to keep attackers out of your devices and network. Ensuring that you mitigate any attacks that slip through the cracks of your other security measures is also important. Network segmentation divides your networks so that an attacker can only access a limited section of it, which protects data and access points in other parts of the network. 
• Firmware security and update management. Many attacks occur because software is out-of-date. If your security team knows there is a vulnerability anywhere in your network, updates and patches to fix it are an important part of keeping exploitation to a minimum. However, this can be overwhelming to security teams. Ensuring that they can access automated update management tools can help. 

By implementing all of these tools, you can reduce your risk of DDoS attack and improve the security of your IoT devices. Completely eliminating your risk is not possible, but you can effectively manage it. To best minimize risk, combine these measures with a thorough incident response plan. 

Protecting Against IoT DDoS Attacks

Many organizations and their IoT devices become targets of DDoS attacks. Especially as these attacks become more accessible to attackers who do not necessarily have typical cyber threat expertise, the risk is always growing. For attackers who do have expertise, it is easier than ever to add complexity to attacks. Many of these attackers leverage AI to make bots more sophisticated and subtle in their activities.

To handle the influx of large, complex bot and DDoS attacks, organizations need equally complex and sophisticated protection solutions. These solutions should be capable of identifying and blocking large-scale, sophisticated attacks before the attacks take down your network or applications. 

The solutions you’re looking for should have a few critical features.

• AI-driven adaptability. If the attackers are using AI, your organization should be too. AI and machine learning should be integrated into the solutions that you use as this can help with detection. Additionally, AI-driven security tools can learn and adapt to threats in real-time, which reduces the resources needed for ongoing detection and improves accuracy.
• Automated, continuous monitoring. Once a DDoS attack has begun, stopping it without substantial extra bandwidth is nearly impossible. Rather than paying for reams of backup bandwidth, focus your efforts on ensuring that unusual activity is detected and addressed as quickly as possible to avert attacks. 
• Large network. Implementing a solution with a global network can help keep latency low. This ensures that responses are as fast as possible when clients make requests. It also allows your network to intelligently distribute traffic when needed, which can prevent DDoS-induced clogs. 

Given the significant challenges of shutting down a DDoS attack, your organization should focus primarily on preventing the attacks to begin with. Preventing the downtime and frustration for your customers will go farther toward preserving your business continuity than even the best response to an attack. 

Although DDoS attack prevention becomes more difficult every year, you can stay ahead of the botnets with the right solutions. Implementing security tools that focus on monitoring, traffic distribution, and threat detection can keep the risk to your network and applications low. By focusing on risk mitigation and attack prevention, your organization can keep disruptions to a minimum, creating a smooth experience for customers.