DDoS protection is not a single product you install — it's a layered defense. Here are 12 concrete steps your team can take, ordered from quickest wins to deeper architectural changes.
Network Layer (L3/L4)
- Enable BCP38 / ingress filtering on your network edge to block spoofed source IPs.
- Route traffic through a reverse-proxy DDoS scrubbing layer — a DNS change is all it takes with Akarguard.
- Rate-limit ICMP, UDP, and SYN packets at the firewall.
- Disable unused UDP services exposed to the internet (DNS amplification, NTP, Memcached).
- Keep your origin server IP confidential — never let it appear in public DNS records.
Application Layer (L7)
- Deploy a Web Application Firewall with rate-limiting rules per IP and per session.
- Enable CAPTCHA or JS challenge on high-traffic endpoints during anomalies.
- Use connection limits and request throttling on your load balancer.
- Cache static assets aggressively — a cached response doesn't hit your app server.
Infrastructure & Resilience
- Use a DDoS-resistant DNS provider — your DNS being reachable is just as critical as your application.
- Run regular load tests to know your actual breaking point before attackers find it.
- Document a DDoS response runbook: who to call, what to do in the first 5 minutes.
Most missed step
Teams spend days hardening their servers but forget their DNS. If your DNS goes down, nothing else matters. Use a DDoS-resistant DNS provider or Akarguard's DNS proxy layer.