Denial Of Service Attacks
Or DOS or Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks. These aren’t reported on that often in the media, but they are still a major threat to a business, in particular one that relies on it being online and available to its customers.
We advise businesses to plan for the Cyber Security threat, and have processes and procedures in place, ready to go, tried and tested. In the, hopefully, unlikely event that you have to use them, they are functional and will enable you to recover the business in a structured and timely manner.
Your Email
Most businesses make use of either Office365 or Google For Work. We see the focus of attackers to move away from attacking the customer enterprise across to these hosted and SaaS applications. In the event of your email provider being taken offline, is there a backup plan to keep communications running ?
Your Website
Its likely that your website is hosted outside of your infrastructure these days. But your supplier can fall victim to a DOS attack. Check with the supplier about what technologies they have in place to mitigate and survive a DOS incursion.
Communications Plan
In the event of a DOS attack, however unlikely, have a good out of band communications plan ready, even if its to notify your customers of an issue or break in service. This can include Social Media mediums, for example Tweeting to a list just to keep everyone informed.
Think about whats important to the business. It may be that you have a backup Internet circuit there ready to change over to, BT have a service where they have a 4G dongle there waiting to take over the Internet connection should it go wrong. When we consult with businesses, the questions we ask are around areas about how long can your business survive without, for example, email.
