In digital space there are a plethora of dangers and threats can disrupt the flow of internet traffic. As the IT Supervisor for a small corporation, I’ve identified the top 5 sources and types of digital threats that our company should work to be better equipped against. The first of these threats is those of Distributed Denial of Service attacks (DDoS), which is defined as when a high volume of internet traffic bombards a targeted server, service, or network as a means to disrupt normal traffic, in a metaphorical sense, opening the digital floodgates and overwhelming the server’s ability to process network requests. Secondly, I think the next biggest threat to the company’s digital wellbeing is likely to be DNS hijacking, a strategy implemented by third party perpetrators in which they forward site visitors to a fake website that allows them to steal login credentials, and all manners of personal and confidential data. DNS cache poisoning is yet another serious threat to internet users as this method of attack re-routes internet queries to malicious websites that could be laden with computer viruses or other harmful things. Domain infringements are another serious threat as occasionally, cyber-criminals will spoof domains by making something extremely similar, if not the exact same, as their target’s domain or IP and can do a number of malicious things to harm the viewer and the company. The final threat is expired digital certificates or domains, either of which would pose a risk of an entire website shutting down or becoming simply inoperable.

https://www.cscdbs.com/blog/digital-threats-to-businesses/

There are a number of ways to protect against the many digital threats that seek to destroy or harm website infrastructure and internet ecosystems and I have compiled a number of protections we’ve put in place to prevent against such threats and addressed ways our processes may be further strengthened. Firstly, to mitigate threats such as DDoS attacks, we often monitor for things such as poor connectivity, slowed performance throughout the website, unusually high demand for a specific page, among a number of other unusual activities, although each factor could be circumvented to some extent. Another of the various threats we’ve taken steps to prevent is those of DNS hijacking, which to mitigate, we use Google’s DNS resolver servers with the DNS IP of 8.8.8.8 which is a well known DNS ip and therefore could lend to a hacker guessing the in-use ip and hacking us through there. DNS cache poisoning is extremely similar in nature to DNS hijacking and so we’ve been able to deal with it in much the same way we deal with DNS hijacking, although it has some of the same downfalls as well. To combat potential domain infringement, we have already registered our domain under trademark rights and so we are able to easily fight back against domain infringements in a legal manner, this gives very little room for any cyber-criminals to commit infringement offenses against the company other than perhaps intellectual property infringements. Our final digital threat is that of expired certificates and domains for which I, the lead IT supervisor, have been entrusted with keeping up to date and preventing any issues with expired digital permissions, which could be foiled by simply not paying attention to when the renewals must be done.

To further strengthen our protections against the aforementioned digital threats, there are a number of steps we can take. For protecting ourselves against DDoS attacks, one easy way to prevent them is to invest in Amazon’s DDoS protection, known as their AWS program. The most effective way I’ve found to protect against both DNS cache poisoning and DNS hijacking, is through utilization of centralized DNS configurations, such as BlueCat. In regards to fighting domain infringement, we’ve already taken the best route we can by registering our domains and intellectual properties through legal avenues that will help to enforce trademark and copyright laws should someone infringe on said rights. Finally, to prevent any risk of domain or digital certificate loss through forgetfulness, I would advise the implementation of automatic domain and certificate renewals.