Common Security Threats and Mitigations in System Design
Understand different security threats and effective mitigation strategies to secure distributed systems.
In recent years, even organizations with world-class security have faced breaches, from data leaks in major tech companies to ransomware attacks crippling critical infrastructure.
These incidents reveal a hard truth: no system is completely immune to attack, regardless of how advanced its security mechanisms may be. While encryption, authentication, and network safeguards form the foundation of defense, true resilience requires something more: an understanding of how attackers think and operate.
By anticipating potential attack vectors, System Designers can build layered protections that minimize impact and improve recovery.
In this lesson, we’ll:
Identify the most common security threats in System Design.
Understand the mechanics behind DDoS, Injection, and Man-in-the-Middle attacks.
Implement practical mitigation strategies for each threat.
Adopt a layered security approach for comprehensive defense.
Overview of security threats in modern systems
Building secure systems is a foundational requirement, and ensuring the protection of sensitive data and maintaining user trust is paramount. Attackers are constantly seeking vulnerabilities to exploit, ranging from flaws in application logic to misconfigured infrastructure. They leverage these weaknesses to disrupt services, steal data, or execute unauthorized code.
Understanding these threats is the first step toward building resilient systems. The following are key threat categories that we might encounter:
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks: A DDoS attack is one of the most common threats that attempts to make an online service unavailable by overwhelming it with traffic from multiple sources. Unlike a simple DoS attack from a single source, a DDoS is more difficult to block because it involves multiple distributed attack points.
Injection attacks: These trick an application into executing unintended commands, often by inserting malicious code into data inputs. This includes SQL Injection and Cross-Site Scripting (XSS).
Man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks: These involve an attacker secretly intercepting and possibly altering communications between two parties.
Our goal is to get equipped with the knowledge to recognize these threats and integrate effective security practices into systems from day one.
To help visualize where these attacks occur, the following diagram maps common attack vectors onto a standard system architecture:
Understanding these entry points is crucial. The first major threat we will explore is attacks designed to take our system offline entirely.