"DDoS" stands for Distributed Denial of Service, a type of cyber attack aimed at disrupting the normal functioning of targeted servers, services, or networks. In a DDoS attack, multiple compromised systems, often botnets, flood a target with excessive traffic, overwhelming its capacity to respond. This leads to slowdowns, crashes, or complete downtime of the affected services. Organizations implement various defensive measures to mitigate such attacks, including traffic filtering, redundancy, and load balancing. Understanding DDoS attacks is crucial for maintaining cybersecurity and ensuring service availability.