Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks: A Practical Guide for Government Information Security Teams
Town websites are no longer tourism brochures. Local government websites are powerful tools that connect residents with critical services.
Most local governments utilize some form of digital service model to engage with residents and guests. A 2024 survey by Granicus cited that 85% of government leaders recognized the importance of online services - particularly self-service options for residents.
Counties, cities, and towns around the world are opting for more services online such as:
Contacting government officials
Collecting online payment for taxes and fees
Filing for permits and registration forms
Accessing non-emergency services
Setting online appointments
Automation improves government efficiency and constituent experience. Unfortunately, it comes with a new risk – Distributed Denial of Service Attacks (DDoS).
What is a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attack?
A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is one of the most disruptive threats a cybersecurity professional can face in the public sector. These attacks put public systems and networks under intense strain—causing services to go offline and halting essential operations for cities, towns, law enforcement and public utility infrastructure. When a DDoS attack strikes, it isn't always about stealing data; it's about testing the strength of public sector defenses.
How DDoS Attacks Work
DDoS attacks overwhelm a target with an excess of traffic or requests. Instead of a single computer, attackers use a network of devices known as a botnet. This flood of fake traffic is designed to:
Overload the target’s servers or network resources.
Cause legitimate requests from real users to time out or fail.
Interrupt critical services, sometimes for hours or even days.
Attackers often build their botnets by infecting personal computers, servers, or Internet of Things (IoT) devices with malware. These vectors then attack a target at the same time which overwhelms defenses. Modern attacks can exceed multiple terabits per second, dwarfing older incidents.
The most common type of DDoS attacks are:
Volume-Based Attacks: These are about numbers—flooding systems with so much data that they simply cannot keep up.
Protocol Attacks: These target underlying network protocols (like TCP or UDP), consuming the resources of network equipment such as firewalls and load balancers.
Application Layer Attacks: These are more targeted, aiming at specific software applications (like web servers) with requests designed to exhaust resources and bring the service down.
For public sector IT teams, the most challenging attacks often combine multiple methods to bypass basic security tools.Cybersecurity professionals must keep their knowledge up-to-date to mitigate risk. Advanced training, such as courses by INE, can help IT professionals prevent and respond to DDoS attacks.
Global Reach of DDoS Attacks
Public sector IT environments are highly visible, making them attractive targets for DDoS attackers. When a city’s emergency response platform or a local government website is offline, it affects everyone in the community.
These attacks aren’t isolated. They can happen to any city, town, or public agency around the world.
In 2023, a major metropolitan 911 system in the US suffered a sophisticated botnet attack. For several hours, legitimate emergency calls failed to get through, causing confusion and putting public safety at risk.
Canadian public health portals and provincial government sites experienced outages during COVID-19 response efforts, with attackers likely seeking to disrupt vaccine distribution and public messaging.
During the 2022 French presidential election, government IT teams faced a spike in DDoS activity targeting official information portals and voter registration sites.
In Germany, local government websites came under attack in early 2024, coinciding with debates on critical infrastructure funding.
Several Middle Eastern countries reported outages of airport systems, municipal websites, and even national broadcasters, with evidence pointing to both hacktivist and political motivations.
In 2024, a DDoS attack knocked offline a major metropolitan transport system in Southeast Asia, halting digital ticketing and traffic signal synchronization for hours.
Several Latin American cities reported targeted attacks on city hall and municipal budgeting portals, with some incidents linked to organized crime and others to political dissent.
Sometimes DDoS attacks are paired with a ransom demand. These payouts are costly for smaller governments. It can drain slim budgets, raise the long term cost of cyber insurance, and also reinforce criminal behavior which amounted to over $16 Billion in losses in the United States alone.
How Government Cybersecurity Professionals Can Respond to DDoS Threats
Every strong defense starts with knowing your network’s weaknesses. Public sector IT managers must prioritize systems and services that, if taken down, would cause the most harm to daily operations.
Key steps for prevention and risk assessment include:
Asset Inventory: List all critical hardware, software, and services. Focus efforts on those supporting essential public functions.
Vulnerability Analysis: Test systems for weak points, especially exposed network endpoints, outdated software, or unprotected web applications.
Risk Analysis: Measure the potential impact of a successful DDoS attack on each system. Assess both service disruption risks and reputational risk.
Prioritization: Assign security resources to the highest-risk areas first, such as public-facing websites and emergency response systems.
Make It Routine: Schedule regular reviews. The threat landscape changes quickly, especially with new government tech rollouts or changing public needs.
For teams using cloud infrastructure like Azure, reviewing Microsoft Azure ISO 27001 security controls can help align risk management with recognized standards.
Detection and Response
The faster a cybersecurity professional can identify and respond to a DDoS attack, the less damage it causes. Effective teams mix constant monitoring, clear action plans, and technical solutions tailored to their environment.
Best practices for detection and response:
24/7 Network Monitoring: Use automated tools to watch for abnormal spikes in traffic or unusual patterns. Flag, isolate, and alert security teams about suspicious behavior right away.
Incident Response Plan: Write and regularly update a playbook that spells out who does what during an attack. Run tabletop exercises to keep everyone sharp.
Traffic Filtering and Rate-Limiting: Deploy intrusion prevention systems, web application firewalls, and content delivery networks (CDNs) to blunt attacks before they overwhelm servers.
Collaboration: Coordinate with Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and upstream vendors to reroute or block malicious traffic when a major campaign hits.
Layered Defenses: Combine on-premise and cloud-based security, so no single point of failure disrupts essential services.
Strong defenses depend on highly skilled teams. Ongoing workforce training is a top priority—using approaches like Cyber Security Awareness Training Importance programs and practical exercises to keep everyone prepared for the real thing.
Recovery and Learning from Attacks
No defense is perfect. At some point, a cybersecurity professional will manage incident recovery. The goal: get services back fast, learn from what happened, and adapt for next time.
System Restoration: Get affected services running as quickly as possible using secure backups and tested failover procedures. Verify that restored systems are clean and fully patched.
Communication: Notify internal teams, stakeholders, and the public about service status. Clear, honest updates build trust and help control rumors.
Root Cause Analysis: After systems are stable, review data to understand how the attack succeeded. Document gaps in tools, processes, or training.
Review and Improve: Update risk assessments, security rules, and response plans based on what you learned. Share findings through group debriefs.
Support Team Education: Encourage the team to stay current, using resources like Hands-On Labs for Cybersecurity to reinforce learning through real-world scenarios.
The cycle of prevention, response, and recovery never stops. By improving after every incident, public sector IT leaders build smarter defenses and a stronger, more capable workforce ready for the next wave of DDoS threats.
Conclusion
DDoS attacks will continue to threaten local governments and their residents. IT managers must prioritize continuous learning and hands-on training to maintain strong defenses. Public agencies have a responsibility to invest in trusted cybersecurity and networking education to protect against future disruptions.
Staying vigilant is not a one-time effort but a sustained commitment. High-quality training and ongoing skills development keep defense strategies sharp and the public safe.
