A decade ago, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks were mostly a nuisance. Now they’re a very serious threat to business continuity and the bottom line, says a network product company. DDoS attacks are now components of complex, often long-standing advanced threat campaigns.
Arbor Networks, Inc in its 10th Annual Worldwide Infrastructure Security Report (WISR). The survey details the threats and concerns of service providers and enterprises.
The largest DDoS attack reported in 2014 was 400Gbps; ten years ago the largest reported attack was a mere 8Gbps.
The human element continues to be a factor in IT security defence – not just today, but throughout the last ten years of WISR reporting, the firm says. Just in the past year alone, 59 percent of respondents reported difficulty hiring and retaining skilled staff within their IT security.
Arbor Networks Director of Solutions Architects Darren Anstee said: “Arbor has been conducting the Worldwide Infrastructure Security Report survey for the last 10 years and we have had the privilege of tracking the evolution of the Internet and its uses from the early adoption of online content to today’s hyper connected society. In 2004, the corporate world was on watch for self-propagating worms like Slammer and Blaster that devastated networks the year before; and, data breaches were most likely carried out by employees who had direct access to data files. Today, organisations have a much wider and more sophisticated range of threats to worry about, and a much broader attack surface to defend. The business impact of a successful attack or breach can be devastating – the stakes are much higher now.“
Visit http://arbornetworks.com/report – (registration required) to access the report.
More than a quarter of respondents indicated that they had seen attacks targeting cloud services. Just over one third of respondents indicated an increase in security incidents this year, with about half indicating similar levels to last year. Just under a half of respondents felt reasonably or well prepared for a security incident, with 15 per cent indicating that they having no plans or resources in place.
