A DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack floods a website with overwhelming traffic from many sources at once, aiming to knock it offline — and it can happen to any site, not just large or high-profile ones.
How a DDoS Attack Actually Works
Instead of one attacker, a DDoS attack uses a large network of compromised devices to simultaneously send traffic at a target site, overwhelming its server resources until legitimate visitors can no longer get through.
Why Would Anyone Target a Small Business Site?
Motives range from competitor sabotage and extortion attempts to attacks with no specific target logic at all — some attacks simply sweep across many sites indiscriminately looking for vulnerable targets.
What DDoS Protection Does
DDoS protection systems detect abnormal traffic patterns and filter out malicious requests before they reach your actual server, keeping the site accessible to genuine visitors during an attack attempt.
Do You Actually Need It?
Any business that depends on its website being available — which is nearly every business today — benefits from this protection. E-commerce stores and sites with any public profile are particularly worth protecting.
Is This Expensive?
Network-level DDoS protection is included as standard on our cloud hosting plans and available as part of our dedicated DDoS protection service — it doesn't need to be a costly enterprise-only add-on.
Learn More
See our full DDoS protection page for details on what's included.