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Internet Security: Businesses Struggle to Defend Against Persistent DDoS Attacks
John Summers
It may come as no surprise, but hacker activity and the sophistication of that activity has been dramatically increasing. A recent report by Akamai found that just between Q2 and Q3 2014 that the total number of DDoS attacks increased by 80 percent, and when compared to the same period in 2013, the increase was 389%.
Michael McKinnon, security advisor at AVG Technologies, said that “most common DDoS attacks work at a network layer, blasting senseless traffic at target systems, hoping to overwhelm them and exhaust all available bandwidth—this is the common understanding of what a DDoS represents for most people. However, other denial-of-service attacks can include locking other users out, [like] through multiple failed password reset attempts and other such actions, or wiping databases and disrupting services in more specific ways.”
A report from Kaspersky Lab found that half of worldwide businesses are not prepared to defend against DDos attacks. On average, Small and Medium sized businesses lose $52,000 and Large businesses as much as $444,000 from DDoS attacks because of lost business and IT spending.
A BT report found that 41 percent of all companies have experienced a DDoS attack over the last twelve months.
Mark Hughes, president of BT Security, said that “DDoS attacks have evolved significantly in the past few years and are now a legitimate business concern. They can have a damaging effect on revenues and send an organisation into full crisis mode.”
John Summers, vice president, Security Business Unit at Akamai Technologies said that “DDoS attack size and volume have gone through the roof this year. In the third quarter alone, Akamai mitigated 17 attacks greater than 100 gigabits-per-second, with the largest at 321 Gbps. Interestingly, we witnessed none of that size in the same quarter a year ago and only six last quarter. These mega-attacks each used multiple DDoS vectors to deliver large bandwidth-consuming packets at an extremely high rate of speed.”
