Work Smarter, Not Harder: Effective Strategies to Secure Your Systems and Free Up Resources.
Strategies to Prevent System Misuse and Resource Overload.
Mass adoption is any system or application’s dream. But with that comes the risk of misuse and resource overload. Measures should be in place to ensure the quality of service across all users.
Twitter/X faced this exact problem earlier this year. Their solution? 𝗥𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴, which restricts the number of requests a user or service can make on a system.
While it’s certainly a viable solution for many cases, there are other alternatives worth considering. These solutions, implemented defensively, help avoid the need for ad-hoc remedies.
𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴
Throttling is a simple technique that slows the time it takes to process a task in order to minimize resource consumption. This is often used in conjunction with quotas or rate-limiting so that users aren’t entirely cut off from the service but instead, the quality of service is lowered to a reasonable level.
𝗔𝘂𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗔𝘂𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻
These are important security measures that minimize the risk of service misuse and denial of service attacks (DoS). It also helps identify and limit the access of bots and scraper accounts.
Initially, users or services are verified through credentials or methods like 2FA. After identification, the system decides their access level and resource priority, if applicable.
𝗖𝗔𝗣𝗧𝗖𝗛𝗔
CAPTCHA identifies human users and blocks bots by presenting human-solvable tests for access. Though popular, its impact on accessibility and the challenge of AI mimicking human behavior are significant considerations.
𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗗𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗦𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀
Specifically used to mitigate the risk of system attacks, this approach involves monitoring network traffic to identify malicious activity.
Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) are used to alert and report on identified threats, whereas Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) aim to block them.
Other solutions to prevent system overload include:
Load balancing: distribute requests across multiple servers.
Prioritization: ensuring critical requests have priority to system resources.
Circuit breaker pattern: prevent task retries that are likely to fail.
Concurrency limits: limit the number of connections that can be made to the system or the number of concurrently running tasks.
Preventing system overload and misuse requires a full team effort to employ defensive engineering. The techniques mentioned above should be implemented carefully to ensure legitimate requests are not restricted. Employing a mix of strategies should be used to develop a full-system approach that suits your system’s unique use case.