When Your Website Is Under Attack, You Need the Right Hosting Team on Your Side

Cyberattacks are an unfortunate reality of running a business online. While strong preventative measures are essential, even the most well-secured websites can still become targets for determined hackers. The key to protecting your business isn’t just about prevention—it’s about how fast and effectively your hosting provider can respond when an attack happens. That’s why having DDoS protection for business websites is critical.

At CMS Live, we’ve seen our fair share of cyber threats. One of the most intense we’ve ever handled was a 48-hour Layer 7 DDoS worldwide botnet attack. Here’s how we fought it off and kept our client’s website running without a hitch.

Recognising the Attack: A Changing Tactic

The attack started as a Layer 3 & 4 DDoS attack, designed to overwhelm the firewall, server hardware, and operating system with traffic. Our network admins spotted it quickly, and our systems kicked in to rate-limit requests.

But the attackers adapted. Within hours, they shifted tactics, launching a Layer 7 (application-level) attack, where thousands of unique IPs flooded a single URL with traffic from multiple countries and ASNs. This wasn’t a brute-force assault—it was a sophisticated attempt to slip past traditional security measures.

Fighting Back Against an Adaptive Botnet

Six hours in, the botnet increased its payload. Our hardware firewall was getting saturated, so we changed tactics—rerouting the customer’s website to a new IP. The botnet responded within 60 minutes, tracking the change through real-time DNS lookups and launching a fresh wave of attacks.

It was clear that standard mitigation wouldn’t be enough. We needed enterprise-grade DDoS protection.

We routed traffic through a DDoS protection platform designed to absorb large-scale attacks. Within the first 24 hours, the platform handled:

• 1.2 billion requests

• Over 5.47TB of bandwidth

The botnet attack continued for almost 48 hours—an unusually long duration. Most attacks last 15 to 30 minutes—just enough to knock a website offline or slow it to a crawl. This attack was different. It was persistent, calculated, and highly automated.

Keeping Business Running as Usual

With Advanced DDoS Protection in place, our client’s website stayed up and running. Despite being hit with billions of malicious requests, the site’s performance remained unaffected—customers never even noticed the attack was happening.

While some hosting providers would have left their clients struggling, our proactive approach ensured:

• No downtime

• No disruption to visitors

• No impact on website integrity

The Cost of Not Being Prepared

DDoS attacks like this are becoming more common, and hiring hackers to launch them has never been cheaper. But with the right hosting team on your side, you don’t have to worry about your business going offline. If your website has been attacked - or you want to make sure it never happens again - CMS Live is here to help.

Get in Touch

If you’re looking for DDoS protection for business websites, or need a hosting provider that can handle serious security threats, we’re ready to step in.

Call us on 01282 618210
Email us at hello@cmslive.co.uk

Stay online. Stay secure. Let us take care of the threats so you can focus on your business.