DDoS Hosting – The Contenders for the Best Service Around
Over the past decade, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks have (at least temporarily) taken down the websites of legacy players such as JPM Chase and the BBC.
The financial damage hackers can do by taking your site offline with DDoS is matched by the catastrophic effect on your brand’s trustworthiness that hackers can have once consumers find out a DDoS attack has taken place.
In light of DDoS’ growing popularity among unscrupulous actors, many web hosting solutions have started to offer DDoS protection as part of their different hosting plans.
While shared, VPS and dedicated plans can all benefit from excellent DDoS protection, here’s what you should be looking for to see if you’ll be getting your money’s worth:
- What other security features are included?
- Does it include SSL certificates?
- Do they utilize server redundancy?
- How much bandwidth does each plan come with?
There are other factors that you should take into account before subscribing to a hosting solution that offers DDoS protection. All in all, though, these questions should help you understand which DDoS hosts are worth looking into.
What is DDoS?
When hackers use DDoS to attack a server, they’re essentially sending that server much more traffic than it can handle.
In a DDoS attack, hackers use malware to take over hundreds or even thousands of computers and, perhaps more disturbingly, IoT devices. Once they have these connected devices under their control, hackers use scripts to command each device to send service requests to the IP address of a specific server.
With so many computers and devices sending requests, it can be very difficult to discern which computer is directing the orchestrated attack.
Unable to cope with this sudden spike in traffic, the server issues a denial-of-service. In practice, what this means is that any websites hosted on the targeted server go offline.
Though DDoS attacks can target different sections of your network connection to cause different connectivity issues, the end goal is the same: overwhelm the server so that it is unable to process any requests, legitimate or bot.
Why do You Need DDoS Hosting?
For shared plans in particular, DDoS hosting gives you peace of mind by protecting your server from DDoS attacks that could leave your website with a lot of unscheduled downtime.
Even with VPS and dedicated plans that offer root access, there’s only so much the end user can do to keep their server from being overwhelmed by requests from the computer and IoT army that DDoS attackers call up.
DDoS hosts use a number of measures to keep your servers safe: network and web firewalls, server redundancy, load balancers, anti-DDoS software and other procedures are taken to ensure your network connection is secure.
While it would be nice to imagine that choosing a hosting plan with unlimited bandwidth would be the answer to your DDoS traffic problem, it’s worth remembering that unlimited is often a marketing misnomer, and that even resource-rich plans will be hard-pressed to deal with thousands of sudden server requests.
What are the Benefits of DDoS Hosting?
- You may not even realize you’re under attack. This is a good thing – it means that your DDoS hosting solution has managed to halt the attack before it had any impact on your website, whether by configuring your server’s firewall to block bad packets, utilizing redundant DNS servers or any other mode of protecting your server.
- You’ll have systems in place to deal with DDoS attacks in real-time. No DDoS hosting service can give you a 100% guarantee that a DDoS will never take place. After all, hackers are always looking for new ways to spam your server and bring your site down. DDoS hosts strive for the best but prepare for the worst by having multiple data centers and redundant servers so they can quickly move your site if needs be to keep it up and running.
- You’ll have access to emergency backups. DDoS hosting plans place a premium on keeping your website and its accumulated data safe. In the unfortunate event that a DDoS hack does get through to disrupt your DDoS host’s heavily guarded network connection, your host will have emergency backups of your website waiting for you so you can get back online as quickly as possible.
What Factors to Consider for DDoS Hosting
- What other security features does it offer? Sadly, DDoS is only one of many sinister paths hackers can take to harm your website, your customer data, and your brand reputation. Stick with hosting providers that make your site’s overall security its priority with 24/7 network monitoring, firewalls, spam and malware protection.
- How reliable is it in general? DDoS hosts need to be able to prevent DDoS attacks from taking your site down, but they also need to be able to uphold terrific uptimes even when your website isn’t under attack. DDoS hosts that guarantee uptimes of between 99-100% and that have a reputation for keeping this promise, as well as hosts that offer no-downtime server updates are a better bet.
- How good is its support? Having your website slowed or pulled offline by DDoS goons can be frightening, and you want to know that if you are affected by such an attack that your host’s support team has your back. 24/7/365 technical support in a language that you are comfortable conversing in and that is accessible by email, live chat, and phone can be a huge asset and comfort in what is otherwise a very difficult situation.
- What other features does it offer? Protecting your website from DDoS should be a priority, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of what you can do with your website. Before purchasing a DDoS hosting plan, think about what other features and tools are important for you to make your website a success, then go through your DDoS shortlist to see which come with these features at a price point that works for you.
Choose the Best DDoS Web Hosting
DDoS attacks aren’t going away anytime soon and choosing a web hosting solution that’s optimized to fend off these attacks can go a long way in keeping your site safe and your customers satisfied. In order to find a DDoS host that’s living up to its word, look over our DDoS hosting user reviews and find the perfect DDoS host for you today!