Blog & Company News
Nov 21, 2016
The Day The Internet Stood Still
It’s almost 2017 and, today, even toasters are connected to the internet.
We call it IOT – or “internet of things” – and, in case you haven’t heard, it’s the latest technology wave to hit consumer electronics. Cisco estimates that by 2020, there could be anywhere from 50 to 200 billion internet-connected devices in use.
While it’s great that our cars, homes, coffee makers, and refrigerators will join us in this great experiment, we’re now seeing some of the bad that will come with the good.
Last month, a massive cyber attack targeted a major Domain Name System (DNS) provider in the U.S., resulting in some of the web’s most popular websites to become unavailable. This included sites like Twitter and Netflix, among others.
The type of attack that occurred is called a DDoS – short for Distributed Denial of Service – which is a very common type of network-based attack that is intended to overload a website or network with so many requests that it becomes unavailable. In simpler terms, it overpowers a website with so many web hits, it can’t handle it and then goes offline.
What makes this recent large-scale attack unique is that many IOT devices – versus traditional computers – were used to execute the attack. With DDoS, computers infected with malware are controlled to send a large wave of requests to an intended target. In this case, many of these “zombie” computers were actually nontraditional devices, like toasters.
Ultimately, this attack, which did not affect NewtekOne or NewtekOne services, was an eye-opener for the industry. With so many new internet-connect devices hitting the market daily, we might be entering a new era of large-scale DDoS attacks using gadgets that don’t have much in terms of cyber security attached to them.
So what does this mean for NewtekOne Customers?
Well, we have some good news. NewtekOne customers that host their websites and applications within our secure, tier-3 data center (and network) already enjoy the benefits of advanced DDoS protection.
Well before last month’s major event, we made an aggressive decision to invest in proactive, enterprise-level DDoS defenses to ensure we had maximum protections against these types of attacks.
Benefits of our DDoS Attack Protection include:
* Proactive detection of DDoS attacks that mitigate malicious traffic hitting our network before it impacts customer services.
* Ability to identify and remove malicious traffic while allowing legitimate traffic to pass through.
* Ability to mitigate large-scale attacks.
* Around-the-clock monitoring to ensure continuous availability of our customers' critical business assets and data.
It is important to note that NewtekOne has made investments to combat DDoS attacks for many years, but our recent upgrades represent the latest and most advanced technologies available. In other words, our customers now benefit from real enterprise-level protection that many managed technology providers are not willing or able to invest in.
Would you like to learn more about how NewtekOne can keep your website and I.T. systems protected? Contact us at any time.
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