DDos Attacks Increase, But Would-Be Victims Are Getting Smarter

Hackers may be getting smarter, but so are their would-be victims, according to a new study from Neustar, a cloud-based information services provider.

Despite the rate and range of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks rising rapidly in 2015, so too are corporations’ efforts to protect against them, the company found in its third global DDoS Attacks and Protection Report. Of the 1,000 IT professionals surveyed, 73 percent said of organizations said they were struck with a DDoS attack in the past year. However, 76 percent of companies have also invested in more protection against such attacks, and 47 percent actively share information with others in security consortiums.

That’s not to say that attackers aren’t making their mark, however; 50 percent of organizations said an attack would cost them $100,000 per hour in a peak-time outage, while 33 percent estimated an attack would cost them upwards of $250,000 per hour. And the chance of being attacked multiple times increases after the first successful attempt – 82 percent of organizations that had dealt with a DDoS attack were attacked again, according to the study.

So what kinds of information do attackers generally look for? Unsurprisingly, 57 percent of reported breaches involved theft of intellectual property, customer data or financial information. Nearly half of all victims reported the installation of a virus or malware after ridding themselves of the initial attack.

“The findings of our most recent report are clear: attacks are unrelenting around the world but organizations are now recognizing DDoS attacks for what they are – an institutionalized weapon of cyber warfare – and so are protecting themselves,” says Rodney Joffe, Head of IT Security Research at Neustar, in a statement. “This should be a discourse that reaches from security through to marketing, as when a DDoS attack hits, the reverberations are felt like a domino effect throughout all departments.”

Even though more companies are finally learning how to protect themselves, Neustar said the next area of focus should be the Internet of Things (IoT).  As IoT continues its expansion throughout the enterprise, attackers will undoubtedly begin to look for weak points in mobile devices, wearables and office automation systems. Neustar reported that while 63 percent of companies currently utilize IoT devices, only 34 percent have any means of protection in place. Going forward, channel partners would be smart to bundle security services with the IoT devices they sell if they want to gain the trust and loyalty of their enterprise customers.