Advanced Technologies Security Awareness Program: DDoS Attack Analysis

This report analyzes a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack faced by Linen Planet, where Advanced Technologies (AT) provided network services. The attack caused a network outage and served as a distraction while attackers stole customer data, including credit card information. The report emphasizes the importance of a Security Awareness Program (SAP) in preventing such disasters. It suggests proactive measures like closing network traffic requests, blocking IP addresses, and building DDoS-resistant infrastructure with sufficient bandwidth and load balancing. The report also recommends hardware configurations like firewalls and routers to block malicious DNS responses. Furthermore, it stresses the need to improve the SAP to prepare both staff and stakeholders for attacks, ensuring awareness of software programs and secure downloads. The report concludes by advocating for a well-architected system capable of handling excess traffic and congestion. The assignment uses references to support the analysis and recommendations.

Running head: SECURITY AWARENESS PROGRAM
Security Awareness Program
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:

1SECURITY AWARENESS PROGRAM
Evaluation of DDoS attack
Linen Planet faced a problems with the computer network as their network was went
down. Advanced Technologies (AT) hosted and provided services for computer network of
Linen Planet. After investigation of two days, it was found that there was a Distributed
Denial of Service (DDoS) attack to take down the network of Linen Planet. It was also found
that DDoS was not main event while it was just a distraction. The attack discouraged
capability of service and computer network to respond to user’s request as well as cut off
communication as well as access to the content (Somani et al., 2017). The hacklers jammed
system by sending of malware contained links as well as files. While the staffs of Advanced
Technologies busy in recovering from attack, someone had used username as well as
password of Padma for getting access to the account. The attacker has stone data of
customers, and also their credit card data.
By means of using Security Awareness Program (SAP), this type of disaster could
have been avoided and prevented. The security officer of Advanced Technologies should take
precautions against the issues by closing appearing requests in queue for stopping the
network traffic. This type of issues are blocked IP address of computer servers causing
network traffic. One of the way to prevent DDoS attacks is creation of the infrastructure
“DDoS resistant”, which ensures that there is sufficient bandwidth for handling spikes in the
traffic that produced malicious activities (Saied, Overill, & Radzik, 2016). In order to avoid
DDoS attack, it should ensure that there is enough bandwidth at disposal as compared to
attacker has. It should require to spread data centres by means of load balancing scheme for
distribution of traffic among them. It is required that the data centres are being linked to
various networks in addition there is no such bottlenecks or disappointment in the computer
networks. Distribution of computer server will cause tough for the attacker to outbreak more

2SECURITY AWARENESS PROGRAM
than the servers (Kalkan, Gur, & Alagoz, 2017). Advanced Technologies should require to
implement those strategies for preventing DDoS attacks in future.
A simple hardware configuration can also prevent this DDoS attack. Configuration of
firewall as well as router is used for blocking DNS responses from the outside network. It can
prevent DNS as well as ping based volumetric attacks. The company should bring the
network servers to manage requests, hence destroying issues (Wang et al., 2018). This
strategy can reduce impact of disaster. There should require to improve over the SAP, so that
it ensures that both stakeholders as well as staffs of Advanced Technologies should prepare
for the attacks. It would also make sure that each one within the company can conversant
with the programs of software as well as applications to be aware of links along with secured
downloads. There should be improvement of basic plan for attacks, therefore the company
can get access to support the engineers (Saied, Overill, & Radzik, 2016). The company
should require to develop well architected system that can able to handle excess traffic
volumes along with congestions.

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References
Kalkan, K., Gur, G., & Alagoz, F. (2017). Defense mechanisms against DDoS attacks in
SDN environment. IEEE Communications Magazine, 55(9), 175-179.
Saied, A., Overill, R. E., & Radzik, T. (2016). Detection of known and unknown DDoS
attacks using Artificial Neural Networks. Neurocomputing, 172, 385-393.
Somani, G., Gaur, M. S., Sanghi, D., Conti, M., & Buyya, R. (2017). DDoS attacks in cloud
computing: Issues, taxonomy, and future directions. Computer Communications, 107,
30-48.
Wang, A., Chang, W., Chen, S., & Mohaisen, A. (2018). Delving into internet DDoS attacks
by botnets: characterization and analysis. IEEE/ACM Transactions on
Networking, 26(6), 2843-2855.