In a detailed exploration of using the ELK Stack for combating DDoS attacks, the text highlights the increasing threat posed by distributed denial-of-service attacks orchestrated through IoT devices, like the Mirai botnet. It emphasizes the importance of centralized logging and monitoring as crucial strategies for rapid identification and mitigation of such attacks. DevOps and IT teams are advised to focus on analyzing web server access logs and CDN traffic to detect surges in error codes and bad URL requests, using tools like Kibana for visualization and monitoring. Alerts based on thresholds can provide timely notifications of potential attacks, while network traffic monitoring offers a complementary method for identifying smaller-scale intrusions that might escape detection via web server logs. The text also notes the absence of a built-in alerting mechanism in the ELK Stack, suggesting alternatives like X-Pack or the Logz.io service. Despite a stable number of DDoS attacks in 2016, their increasing size and severity underscore the ongoing relevance of logging as a key defense mechanism.