When you’re involved in API design, much of the hard work you’ve done to bring the API to life is invisible to the end user. Many of the APIs that ordinary consumers are happy with take mere seconds to fulfill their requests. However, getting to that point is neither as easy nor as quick for developers. There’s a lot of coding, mocking, maintenance work, and documentation to be done before the API is anywhere close to hitting the market. But one thing makes all the difference in helping developers clear all these steps in a timely and efficient manner: great API design.   

As with many other software and hardware products, thoughtful design matters when it comes to APIs. It ensures smooth implementation and usage experiences, and it also sets a precedent for better work in the future. In contrast, flawed design can obstruct developers’ initial workflow, cause expensive delays, and leave something to be desired in terms of end user satisfaction. Sadly, many API developers commit the same design mistakes over and over again before they find out what they can do better. By then, they’ll have wasted time, resources, and momentum that’s hard for them to get back.  

If you want to get the process right as soon as possible, avoid these six common design flaws. By doing so, you’ll make the most out of the development cycle and realize the full potential of your API.   

Being Inconsistent About Design Tools and Design Environments 

Consistency is one of the most important values in the API design process. But oftentimes, coding work can become very inconsistent because it isn’t executed according to a set standard. One of the best things you can do to avoid sloppy and inconsistent design work is to standardize your tools, environment, and workflow. Doing this will make it easier for you to replicate the same quality of work across different tasks.  

It’s never too late to standardize your toolset and environment for the better. Try the Stoplight API design tools on Stoplight’s visual editor to achieve better consistency, as well as momentum, on your API design.  

Not Following Common API Naming Conventions 

You have a lot of freedom in terms of how you design your API. But in terms of approaches to take, especially for REST APIs, it’s good to stick to industry practices that are widely accepted. It ensures that you and your fellow API designers are speaking the same language when you’re deciding how to build the API. One example is the naming conventions for REST API URLs. The norm is to use plural concrete nouns, not abstract nouns or verbs. After all, URLs are supposed to direct to resources that are objects, not actions.  

In short, avoid the design flaw of going against commonly accepted notions for API design. If you stick to the formula, coding work will be much less confusing on your part as well as those of fellow developers.  

Being Redundant and Not Following Standard Practices When Designing Parameters 

Another area of API design that sees quite a number of mistakes is the formatting of parameters. Too often, developers write code in a format that doesn’t serve a clear purpose. Other times, they may write parameters in one way for one line and then type it a completely different way in the next.  

As a developer, you can avoid mistakes like these by being more careful about every line of code. The format you use should make sense, be consistent across fields, and not be a pain for your fellow developers to crack. If you trim unnecessary or redundant parameters in the body portion of each response and request, then your API design will read much more smoothly for it.  

Mixing Up HTTP Methods 

REST API design in particular anchors itself on the proper usage of HTTP request methods. The most well-known of these are GET, PUT, POST, PATCH, and DELETE. Whenever any of these methods are involved, they have to facilitate the kind of action that they’re commonly expected to.  

To illustrate simply, GET should only be used for requests for retrieving data, while DELETE should only be used for removing the resource. HTTP request methods should never be mixed up, and should always be consistent in their usage throughout the API code. Rookie developers benefit best from reviewing the purpose of each HTTP request method. But even advanced-level developers should spend a little extra time making sure that each usage of request method aligns with its rightful purpose.   

Mishandling of API Errors 

No API is free from experiencing errors. In fact, the more complex the API product is, the more capable you have to be at handling errors. Thus, error messages are an important part of the API design process. Unfortunately, it’s rather common for developers to obfuscate the true nature of the error in their messages. When that happens, users are left in the dark about what went wrong in their request and why.  

When writing your own error messages, it would help to detail what type of error occurred and what the user can do to fix it. To be safe, defer to HTTP protocols for different types of errors instead of going by an arbitrary error classification and error message system.   

Not Keeping Track of Versions 

The last on this list pertains to API versions. Though the API may have undergone a facelift at one point or another, some developers neglect to include this in their design. As a consequence, users may struggle to know which version of the API they’re using and which features are either compatible or no longer compatible.  

The solution to this flaw is simple: always implement versioning on your APIs. Include version numbers on your URLs or use custom headers for each version as needed. Properly versioning your API’s resources will give your users clarity on how advanced or upgraded its features are. It will also save you and your fellow developers a lot of grief about segregating past resources and present ones.  

Conclusion 

In practice, an API with these design flaws may still actually work. But how well do you think it will work? How easy will it be to troubleshoot or to fix? How prepared will you and your team be to scale up the API when the time comes?  

Practical, thoughtful, and consistent design will sustain an API long after its creation. Aim not only to complete the API, but to launch a product that’s representative of the best design work you can offer to your users. 

Many of the world’s most important industries have made the shift toward digitization, and the modern insurance industry is no exception. The most promising insurance companies know that bolstering their current tech stack is the key not only to survival but also growth. But simply acquiring a new type of technology, such as a cloud-based insurance management system, doesn’t guarantee immediate success. Those who work in the insurance sector must also be aware of how that technology’s being used—and how to leverage it to stay competitive.  

What are the most important trends to watch out for now that the insurance industry is quickly going digital? Here are five considerations that you should make, as well as a treatise on how these could affect your insurance company: 

Heightened Popularity of Digitization for Insurance Businesses 

The first trend to be aware of is that digitization is fast becoming the norm in the industry. In general, more insurance businesses than ever before have made the move to digitize their operations. They have good reasons for upgrading to digital insurance platforms, namely the following: 

• Cloud-based platforms can fulfill essential tasks like pricing, risk assessment, and analytics with twice the efficiency of a legacy system that’s reliant on manual processes.  
   
• It’s also possible to use these platforms for complex and time-consuming steps in the insurance processes, such as triaging claims according to urgency.  

• Upgrading to better insurance technology can also enhance an insurance business’s customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities. 

Many of your peers in the industry are thinking about pooling more of their efforts and their resources into a digital transformation. It’s either that, or they have already done so. That means that the onus is on your company to adapt and become even more responsive to the clients enrolled in your insurance programs. 

Expansion of Insurance Programs to New Geographical Territories 

Aggressive international expansion is another trend you should watch out for. The most competitive global insurance companies have started branching out across borders and tapping new markets away from their home regions. Since their home markets may be flat, these companies have made use of digital technology to start expanding and building international awareness of their brands.  

For sure, insurance companies that are willing to expand have many challenges ahead of them. They will need to put in the time to study their new markets, as well as the regulations that govern the industry there. But the payoff is significant: in the long run, they’ll earn the lucrative opportunity to sell their insurance products to a fresh customer base. Who’s to say that you won’t be in that position someday? Perhaps you can consider international expansion a future goal for your own company.  

Even Simpler and Faster Insurance Processes 

The speed and efficiency of the digital era have made one thing more apparent—that customers prefer things to be simple and straightforward. The same applies to enrolling in insurance programs and going through the motions of their insurance processes. Long, complicated, and difficult processes cause customer fatigue and decrease their overall satisfaction with their carrier. In contrast, streamlined knowledge and service delivery improve customer satisfaction and drive higher customer retention rates.  

This means that overly complex “catch-all” insurance programs—once the cornerstone of legacy insurance systems—are on their way out. Simplified products and processes are in, and they will likely be for a long time. That’s why insurance businesses who have gone the digital route should use the upgrade in their tech stack to streamline their existing programs. Keep this in mind when you’ve deployed a new digital insurance platform of your own.  

Unbundled Insurance Programs 

Speaking of catch-all insurance programs, a greater number of insurance companies have stopped relying on them. Your peers may now be offering risk-based products that are smaller and more manageable for their customers’ life stages. These unbundled policies prove appealing to the emerging millennial market, many of whom are getting insurance for the first time. The “unbundled” approach allows them to slowly but surely get used to the processes and services of their carriers.  

Unbundled products are also easy to implement and monitor for compliance using a digitized system. So if you’re wondering what new approaches to take using your new digital insurance technology, decoupling your policies is one of them.  

Wider Availability of Personalized Insurance Products 

The last trend that you should be aware of pertains to the delivery of personalized insurance products. Nowadays, the spotlight is on individual customers, and the custom factor has become a key business strategy in digital insurance.   

There’s now a greater variety of personalized offerings in insurance carriers’ catalogs. Moreover, products are priced at ideal ranges for different customer life stages, and would-be customers receive targeted messaging through channels like email marketing.  

Today’s digital insurance technology has helped realize a higher level of personalization, which companies should use to their advantage. You can use your platform to cater to the profiles of your individual clients, especially younger workforce constituents who are savvy with technology. By adding more personal touches to your current lineup of insurance products, you can make your company stand out and stay relevant in the industry.  

Final Words: Your Place in the Future of the Insurance Industry 

By now, it may be clear that an insurance digital transformation is underway for many. That kind of change may be good for your own core insurance system as well. Investing in a digital insurance platform may help you respond to your clients’ needs much better than before. That is what will cement your place as the insurance provider of choice amidst steep competition from your peers.   

For both trends and long-lasting indicators of success in the insurance industry, the goal is to stay at least one step ahead. Here’s to staying on top of your new technology and making an impact in digital insurance! 

The Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks has become one of the most dangerous cybersecurity threats for all businesses. The DDoS attack is no longer a threat exclusive for huge enterprises and services like Playstation Network or Amazon Web Service, but now medium-sized and even small companies are increasingly popular as DDoS targets. 

The DDoS attacks are especially dangerous since once they are started, it’s very difficult to stop them, so effective prevention is much preferred. On the other hand, the DDoS attack can cause significant damage not only in financial losses but often long-term and even permanent damage to the business’s reputation. 

For these reasons, knowing how to stop and prevent DDoS attacks is now very important for any businesses who have a website

What Is DDoS Attack?

Understanding DoS Attack

To understand DDoS attacks, we have to first discuss DoS, or Denial of Service, where DDoS can be thought of as an advanced, modified form of a DoS attack. 

Denial of Service is a type of cyber attack in which the attacker aims to slow down a computer, system, or network or even rendering it unavailable to its intended users. 

The DoS attack is performed by interrupting the system’s normal functionality, and the most basic method is to overwhelm a targeted system with requests above its processing limit, so the system can’t process normal traffic. This will result in denial-of-service to additional users. 

The attack is called a DoS attack if it only utilizes a single computer to launch the attack. If it uses more than one computer, then it is a DDoS attack where the attack is ‘distributed’ between different devices, hence the name. 

The DDoS Attack

A DDoS attack amplifies the effect of a DoS attack by using multiple compromised computers (which can be in the thousands) as the source of the attack traffic. These compromised computers are called ‘botnets’, and nowadays they can consist not only of laptops and PCs but also IoT devices and wearables (i.e. your Fitbits and Apple Watches).

A DDoS attack first requires the perpetrator to gain control of the online devices, typically by infecting them with malware and turning them into a zombie machine (the botnet). Once a botnet has been established, the hacker can then remote control the device, so when a URL or IP address is targeted, each botnet will respond by sending requests to the target, resulting in an overwhelming amount of requests happening at the same time.

A DDoS attack can be very difficult to mitigate since the attack is coming from real computers that are impossible to distinguish from legitimate users, and this is why it’s very dangerous. 

Different Types of DDoS Attacks

There are different forms of DDoS attacks targeting different components of the network connection. 

An easier way to explain this is to divide the DDoS attack types based on the OSI model, which describes the different components of an internet connection when we are accessing a website. There are 7 layers of the OSI model: 

1. Layer 1 (Physical layer): the lowest layer, responsible for the actual physical connection between devices.
2. Layer 2 (Datalink layer): responsible for linking data between physical nodes, the main function is to define the format of data.
3. Layer 3 (Network layer): transmission of data between two different networks, responsible for deciding which physical path on the network the data will take. 
4. Layer 4 (Transport layer): transmits data with TCP, UDP, and other transmission protocols. Distributes services from the network layer to the application layer. 
5. Layer 5 (Session layer): responsible for establishing a connection and maintaining it. Controls the sessions and ports. 
6. Layer 6 (Presentation layer): responsible for data encryption and ensuring the data is presented in a usable format
7. Layer 7 (Application layer): the highest layer involving human-computer interaction, the web application can access the network services

Layers 1 and 2 are mostly local, so DDoS attacks in layers 1 and 2 are virtually non-existent since the distribution of the attack would be very limited. Layers 5 and 6 mainly handle the validation of data coming from layers 3 and 4. So, there are three main categories of DDoS attacks: protocol attacks (targeting layer 3 and 4), volumetric attacks (targeting layer 3 and 4), and layer 7 (L7) attacks.

L7 (Application Layer) Attacks

Currently the most sophisticated and advanced form of DDoS attack. Layer 7 is where the web pages are actually generated on the server, and the attack exploits it by attempting to overwhelm the web server by requesting a flood of traffic (mainly HTTP traffic). 

An example of layer 7 DDoS attacks is sending thousands of requests for a certain page per second until the server is overwhelmed. Another common practice (that is much harder to defend against) is calling an API over and over again. 

Protocol Attacks

Data transmitted and received over a network is divided into packets, and layer 3’s main objective is to address these packets to the right destinations via protocols. Layer 4, on the other hand, would open the necessary connections as commanded by layer 3, ensure reliable data delivery, and indicate which service on the target device should use the sent data. 

In layer 3, the most important protocol is IP (Internet Protocol), while layer 4 involves transport protocols including TCP and UDP. 

Protocol attacks would utilize vulnerabilities in these layer 3 and layer 4 to render the network inaccessible by users. There are various ways attackers can attack these vulnerabilities in protocols. 

SYN Flood attack, for example, exploits the vulnerabilities in the  TCP handshake by sending a large number of TCP SYN packets using spoofed IP addresses. The network will then respond to each of these connection requests and waits for the next step in the TCP handshake (which never occurs), exhausting the network’s resources.  

Another common protocol attack is the ICMP Ping of Death, where the attacker sends a ping request that is larger than the maximum size allowed by the protocol. So, when the network tries to reassemble the packet, the packet size exceeds the maximum size and crashes the network. 

Volumetric Attacks

As the name suggests, in a volumetric attack the objective is to saturate the bandwidth of the target website/network. Large amounts of data are sent to a target to create massive traffic, overwhelming the network.

Ping flood DDOS attacks, for example, is when the attacker sends thousands or even millions of pings to the server using botnets. Smurf DDoS is another type of volumetric attack where the attacker sends out ping requests to thousands of websites while spoofing the IP address in the request to the responses go to the target network instead of the attacker.  Modern devices are typically not vulnerable to this smurf ICMP-based attack.

Best Practices for Preventing DDoS Attacks

As we can see, DDoS attacks are possible due to the vulnerabilities in our network whether in the network, protocol, or application layer.

So, preventing DDoS attacks is about minimizing these vulnerabilities by implementing the following best practices:

1. Monitor your traffic regularly and aim for early detection

Identifying the early warning signs is very important in preventing DDoS attacks. There are various tools we can use (a lot of them free) to monitor traffic so we can detect traffic spikes, which is important in detecting volumetric attacks. 

A dramatic increase in traffic is a major sign of a volumetric DDoS attack, so make sure to regularly check your traffic logs and/or have alerts set up when the number of requests or visitors has exceeded a specified threshold depending on your bandwidth. 

You should also consider: 

• The time of the traffic spike. It is, for example, unrealistic to see a spike at 3 AM. 
• The location of the traffic sources. For example, if you are not serving the Chinese market, having a sudden surge of traffic coming from China is suspicious.
• The time of the year. Depending on your business, there might be legitimate spikes, for example, during the holiday seasons. 

However, as we’ve discussed, the volumetric attack isn’t the only type of DDoS attack that might be a threat to you. In a layer 7 attack, for example, the traffic can be as low as 1 request per second but is targeting a vulnerable endpoint in your web application. An AI-powered, behavioral-based bot protection solution like DataDome, is necessary for monitoring your traffic for potential layer 7 DDoS attacks.

2. Increase your network bandwidth

Since DDoS attacks, especially volumetric attacks, operate at the basis of exhausting your resources, provisioning extra bandwidth can be effective to handle the unexpected traffic spikes. This won’t necessarily stop the DDoS attack altogether but may buy you some very valuable time to set up and execute your mitigation plan.

This solution might be expensive since this spare bandwidth might go unused when there’s no incoming attack, but there are hosting services offering burstable billing/burstable bandwidth plans that might provide you with some versatility. They might also offer enhanced protection against DDoS attacks with these plans, so make sure to check with your hosting provider whether they offer such options. 

3. Redundancy in network infrastructure

Maintaining redundancy is a very important aspect of preventing damages caused by DDoS attacks. DDoS attacks are becoming much larger and more sophisticated than ever, but the objective remains the same: disrupting your service.

The idea behind redundancy is that whenever a system is disrupted due to DDoS attacks, we can simply fall back on redundant systems so we can continue delivering service without interruption. Redundancy also allows us to cut off and reroute traffic when needed.

If possible, don’t rely on a single hosting/ISP service, and look for ISP redundancy. There are hosting services that offer the ability to switch between different providers in the event of a DDoS attack, allowing us to reroute traffic to prevent downtime. 

Also, don’t rely solely on your ISP in defending your site against DDoS. In the case of severe attacks that might put all of the ISP’s customers at risk, the ISP will decide on blackholing your traffic and your site will be down indefinitely. Having a dedicated DDoS mitigation solution, as discussed above, remains the best solution.

4. Prepare your organizational response

It’s very important to prepare your operational readiness for a DDoS attack and ensure you can respond ASAP in the event of a DDoS attack. Educate your team regularly with your DDoS response plan, and train them with simulated attacks to validate your organization’s overall DDoS defense.

When a DDoS attack already happens, you won’t have time to plan your response, so having a clear mitigation plan ahead is necessary. You must prepare your team with policies and procedures on: 

• Communications: your staff needs to know exactly what to do and whom to call in the event of a DDoS attack while aiming to disrupt daily operations as little as possible. It’s best to plan a way to relay information in the form of internal short message blasts. 
• Identification of key personnel: it’s important to prevent panic in the event of the attack, which can delay the required mitigation response. It’s important to identify key personnel that should be notified of the attack as soon as possible. Educate your team so everyone understands their role in the DDoS mitigation process. 
• Information-related policies: a simple approach like keeping all phone numbers and names of key personnel in a single place can be extremely important in managing valuable time. Set up policies on how personnel should share and access the required information in the event of a DDoS attack. 

5. Maintain relationships with your key vendors

Successful DDoS mitigation would require the help of your vendors: bot management solution provider, hosting provider, ISP, and so on. Don’t wait until a DDoS attack has happened to start a relationship with their customer service reps. You can build relationships as a preventive measure and incorporate them into your DDoS mitigation plan. This might seem simple, but can be very effective in ensuring a calm, rehearsed response during the event of an attack. 

End Words

While there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to preventing a DDoS attack, a good DDoS mitigation service like DataDome that can protect your site from layer 7 attacks remains the most reliable solution. 

However, preparing your network infrastructure and the human element of your organization is also very important: when a DDoS attack is in place, you won’t have time to plan a response and think about what you should do. Instead, a calm, rehearsed approach is always preferred.