In network security, what does DDoS stand for and how is it mitigated?

• A. Dynamic Delivery of Services; mitigated by caching.
• B. Distributed Denial of Service; mitigated by traffic filtering, rate limiting, and scaling.
• C. Distributed Data Operations System; mitigated by data replication.
• D. Degraded Data Object Scenario; mitigated by backups.

Answer: (B)

DDoS stands for Distributed Denial of Service. It happens when many compromised systems flood a target with traffic, overwhelming its bandwidth or processing power and making the service unavailable to legitimate users. The best mitigation combines traffic filtering, rate limiting, and scaling. Traffic filtering blocks bad traffic early using firewalls or DDoS protection tools that recognize suspicious patterns or sources. Rate limiting restricts how many requests or connections a single source can make in a given time, curbing the flood without shutting down legitimate use. Scaling adds capacity—through additional servers, load balancers, or cloud/CDN resources—to absorb excess load and keep services reachable. In practice, defense is layered and may also involve diverting traffic to scrubbing centers and using anomaly detection. Other approaches like caching or backups don’t directly address the surge in live traffic during an attack.