Forward-looking companies have long realized the great business opportunities that the Internet offers and it's no secret that organizations are shifting more and more of their business processes online.

While this move brings many advantages with it, such as widening customer reach and reducing overheads, the emergence of organized crime in the online world means that business needs to be sharper than ever when it comes to security.

While viruses and worms usually steal the headlines, the growing threat of a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is a form of cybercrime to which no company can say 'they wouldn't target us'. Whilst the first well-documented attacks were against gambling sites and online payment systems, no company should consider itself immune. Especially when your organization will undoubtedly share its Internet Service Provider (ISP) with other businesses who rely on e-commerce and might be more desirable targets to criminals looking for extortion money.

The question you need to ask is - if the company's web site or ISP was unavailable for hours or days, would it effect the business in terms of lost revenues and damage to reputation? Most organizations would quickly answer 'yes'.

So what is a DDoS attack? The aim of a DDoS attack is to paralyze online systems. The attacker compromises a number of unprotected hosts and installs a 'demon' or 'trojan' onto the system. The trojan-infected hosts in turn act as handlers and are able to compromise other computers, which operate as agents for the attack.

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