In early days of the Web, no one heard of a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack; malware came to us through other vectors. Then in early 2000, a series of them DDoS attacks knocked off the air such popular websites as Yahoo, CNN, and Amazon. Today, DDoS attacks are thicker than fleas on a hound-dog, and are more complex than ever. They can hit your sites and your customers’ sites from more angles and they can knock out a website for minutes or even days.

Fortunately, the security defenses have been keeping up.

How bad is it? Proxleic, a DDoS mitigation company, reported that from the fourth quarter of 2012 to the fourth quarter of 2013, total DDoS attacks increased by 26%. The biggest attack Proxleic had to cope with in 2013 peaked at 170 Gigabits per second. So, tell me, how fast is your Internet connection?

DDOS in 2014: The New Distributed Denial of Service Attacks and How to Fight Them. More>