Fortifying Cyber Defenses: Leveraging Honeypots for Proactive Threat Mitigation and DoS Attack Prevention

Abstract

As cyber threats become more sophisticated, organizations must adopt proactive defence mechanisms to safeguard their digital infrastructure. Distributed Denial of Service (DoS) attacks pose a significant risk by overwhelming networks, causing service disruptions, and leading to financial and reputational losses. Traditional security measures, such as firewalls and intrusion detection systems (IDS), often struggle to provide real-time threat intelligence and adaptive countermeasures. This study explores the use of honeypots as a proactive defence mechanism for threat mitigation and DoS attack prevention. Honeypots are deceptive security systems designed to attract attackers, allowing organizations to monitor malicious activities, analyze attack patterns, and develop robust cybersecurity strategies. The research involves deploying and analyzing different types of honeypots, including low-interaction and high-interaction models, to gather insights into attacker behaviour integrating honeypots into cybersecurity frameworks, organizations can enhance their ability to detect and prevent cyber threats before they escalate. The findings of this study demonstrate how honeypots contribute to strengthening cyber defenses, providing real-time threat intelligence, and mitigating the impact of DoS attacks. The research also highlights challenges and future directions, such as AI-driven honeypot systems for adaptive threat detection