DDoS is one of the most common attacks that happen on websites with high traffic volumes. Otherwise called Denial of Service Attack, it floods a website with fake requests and makes them look like traffic spikes. Too many such requests tend to slow down the site or even cause a crash. Similarly, there is also the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack which occurs when such high volumes of requests are sent from multiple sources.

As a countermeasure, there are plenty of tools which can be run on your site server and safeguard your site from probable attacks. Here are the top ones used by site owners worldwide and recommended by tech experts-

Cloudflare

One of the most trusted and popular tools, Cloudflare gives basic DDoS protection. For advanced security options, you need to opt for their premium plans. The Cloudflare network is spread across 165 data centers with over 25 TBPS capacity, and are perfectly equipped to handle any kind of distributed attacks. You can avail of their 24/7 support center and the best feature of this tool is that their pricing is fixed, which means that irrespective of the size of the attack and the retrieval thereof, their fees remain the same. Cloudflare offerings:

Secures Layer 3, 4 & 7

DNS amplification

DNS reflection

SMURF

ACK

SUCURI

SUCURI offers DDoS protection via two plans- WAF and Website Security Platform. This security solution supports websites built on different platforms like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento,  .Net, etc. WAF is more targeted security while Website Security Platform offers a more comprehensive solution and includes DDoS mitigation. SUCURI offers:

Malware cleanup/detection

Security monitoring

Performance optimization

Brute force attacks

Zero-day prevention

Bad bot and much more

DNS amplification

Simple service discovery protocol

HTTP flood

User datagram protocol

AWS Shield Advanced

This is another popular and widely used tool to address DDoS. AWS runs a managed DDoS protection tool called Shield which is available to all applications running on AWS, without any extra cost. For advanced security, you can opt for Shield Advanced. This premium version helps detect probably threats early on and helps block traffic when necessary. AWS Shield Advanced offers:

Shield advanced got many advantages over shield standard, such as:

Inspect network flow and monitor application-layer traffic

Sophisticated automatic mitigation

Access to 24×7 DDoS response team

Post-attack analysis

StackPath

This security tool has more than 65 TBPS of capacity and can easily block substantial volume traffic from attacking. StackPath offers standard security measures against DDoS and can block attacks globally. StackPath offers:

45 edge locations

More than 3600 peering partners

28000+ ASNs

Cloud Armor

This tool is perfect if you are hosting applications on Google Cloud. It works only with Google Cloud HTTP (s) load balancer and keeps all your Google services safe. Cloud Armor offers:

Protection against infrastructure and application

Create custom rules

IP and Geo-based access controls

Powerful logging on Stackdriver

Summing up…

Tools make for a smart and efficient way of handling attacks. However, as the site owner, you must ensure that the basic security of your website, which can be achieved by hosting your site on a safer and more secure environment like VPS Hosting. You can avail of a managed VPS hosting plan, where DDoS is also included as a part of the service so that you can ensure complete protection of your website.