Until relatively recently, DDoS protection was something that only the biggest of businesses could benefit from. Today, that has changed and there are a number of services, such as CloudFlare, that can offer advanced affordable DDoS protection to any webmaster.
These services use caching to reduce the number of requests that hit your website. They have a number of remote servers in different locations, ensuring that every user - regardless of where they are in the world - gets served up a copy of your website promptly.
These advanced affordable DDoS protection services also offer protection from brute force attacks, repeated pings, and other attacks from malicious users, so you are protected not just from sudden spikes in traffic but also from malicious attacks. What's more, in the case of CloudFlare the basic version of the service is free - and you can subscribe for greater levels of protection.
DDoS attacks are something that can happen to anyone. They are relatively easy to perform, so a disgruntled customer or malicious competitor could cause havoc for your business. In addition, there are a lot of young "script kiddies" who perform DDoS attacks as a form of online vandalism. While these attacks rarely cause lasting damage (although you could end up with a large bill from your hosting company, or getting your account suspended), they do impact on your brand and could cost you a lot of customers in the short term.
Setting up DDoS protection is fairly simple. To use a cloud service such as CloudFlare all you need to do is modify your DNS server settings so that people who visit your website are directed to CloudFlare first, to see if that service has an up-to-date and accurate version of your site. CloudFlare will handle the vast majority of your requests, with only dynamic content and things like financial transactions being routed through your servers first and foremost.
