Distributed Denial of Service Defense Fact Sheet

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are used to render key resources unavailable. Hackers accomplish a DDoS attack by literally sending so much web traffic at a target that it is unable to function. A classic DDoS attack disrupts a financial institution’s website and temporarily blocks the ability of consumers to conduct online banking. A more strategic attack makes a key resource inaccessible during a critical period. The Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) Distributed Denial of Service Defense (DDoSD) is working to increase deployment of best practices that would slow attack scale growth, seeking to defend networks against one terabit per second (Tbps) scale attacks through development of collaboration tools suitable for medium-scale organizations and working to defend emergency management systems—both current 911 and Next Generation 911 systems—from Telephony Denial of Service (TDoS) attacks.