In the past, DDoS attacks primarily targeted large enterprises, but nowadays, small and medium-sized websites also face such threats. Whether it’s e-commerce platforms, game service providers, or financial institutions—any entity involving commercial interests or data value—can become a target for hackers. Attack motivations vary, including malicious extortion for competitive purposes, politically motivated attacks, or even just “practice.”
So, what is a DDoS attack?
It’s not just about “crashing a website”—it’s a fatal blow to your business!
The principle of a DDoS attack may seem simple, but it is highly destructive. Hackers control a large number of zombie devices (such as infected computers, servers, or IoT devices) to send massive amounts of requests to the target website, exhausting its network resources and ultimately causing service interruption.
Here are four major consequences of a DDoS attack on a website:
Service Interruption:
When a website is paralyzed by a DDoS attack, users see only error pages or infinite loading. For e-commerce platforms, every minute of downtime can mean significant losses. According to statistics, a severe DDoS attack can cause a company’s daily revenue to drop by more than 20%.
Customer Experience and Trust Crisis:
Modern users are extremely sensitive to website performance. If your website frequently experiences delays or errors, users may not only lose patience but also permanently switch to competitors. More seriously, they may question the company’s technical capabilities and reliability, causing long-term damage to brand reputation.
Escalating Security Risks:
Many hackers use DDoS attacks as a smokescreen to launch deeper intrusions, such as data theft or ransomware implantation. If a company focuses solely on restoring services while ignoring underlying security vulnerabilities, it may face even more catastrophic consequences.
Soaring Financial and Compliance Costs:
In addition to direct revenue losses, companies must bear emergency response costs (e.g., overtime for technical teams, temporary bandwidth expansion) and may even face fines for failing to meet industry security compliance requirements (e.g., GDPR, PCI DSS).
Why Is Your Website an Easy Target for DDoS Attacks?
Although many companies recognize the importance of cybersecurity, they often only realize how vulnerable their defense systems are after an attack occurs. For example:
The network architecture lacks elasticity：If a website relies on a single server or does not deploy load balancing, it is highly susceptible to a “single point of failure” during an attack.
No traffic scrubbing mechanism is enabled： Without the ability to identify and filter malicious traffic in real time, the website can only passively endure the attack.
Lack of basic protections such as CDN and WAF： Exposed origin server IPs without buffer nodes are equivalent to “running naked” in a flood of attacks.
Hong Kong Data Center’s Defense Strategy: Multi-Layered Coordination to Build Business Resilience
In the face of DDoS attacks, Hong Kong Data Center has built a robust shield for customers through the following three-layer protection system:
Protection System 1: CDN Global Node Distribution
Hong Kong Data Center uses CDN to not only hide the origin server IP and distribute content to global edge nodes but also absorb large-scale L3/L4 flood attacks (e.g., SYN Flood, UDP Flood), reducing the pressure on the origin server and preventing it from being overwhelmed by traffic.
Applicable scenarios: Brand websites, gaming platforms, multimedia services, and other scenarios sensitive to bandwidth and latency.
Protection System 2: WAF Application Layer Protection
Web Application Firewall (WAF) can deeply filter network application layers, defending against common L7 attacks (e.g., SQL injection, malicious crawlers). It can also work in tandem with CDN to distinguish between legitimate users and malicious traffic, establishing a complete defense line for the website.
Applicable scenarios: Various online transaction websites, government, education, and other fields requiring high-sensitivity protection.
Protection System 3: IDC On-Premises DDoS Scrubbing
Through on-premises scrubbing devices and firewall combinations, L3, L4, and TCP/UDP attacks can be blocked, and malicious traffic can be intercepted directly at the network backbone layer. Meanwhile, the BGP protocol redirects attack traffic to the scrubbing center, where it is filtered before legitimate traffic is returned to the server.
Applicable scenarios: High-bandwidth enterprises, IDC hosting customers.
DDoS attacks have shifted from a “potential threat” to a “normalized risk.” Rather than responding after the fact, it’s better to prepare in advance. Leveraging its dual advantages in geography and technology, Hong Kong Data Center provides comprehensive protection from the edge to the core, allowing you to focus on business innovation without fear of network storms.