The growing threat of DDoS attacks

Corero Network Security’s customers experienced an average of 237 DDoS attack attempts a month during Q3 2017 – equivalent to eight attack attempts every day, which is almost double the number experienced in Q1 2017, according to its half-yearly DDoS Trends report.

Organisations around the globe have become increasingly dependent on the internet as a means to conduct business, and the internet-connected world has grown more complex due to faster throughput, larger connections, the internet of things (IoT), and public and private clouds. 

Simultaneously, distributed denial of service (DDoS) threats have become more sophisticated and common. Internet reliability can come down to a fraction of a second; since its inception, the internet has been all about availability. When the internet goes down, businesses that rely on that service go down with it, and DDoS attacks are considered one of the most serious threats to internet availability today. Downtime or latency significantly impacts brand reputation and, ultimately, revenue. 

When you combine the frequency and duration of attacks, and the low volume, sub-saturating nature of the threats, victims are faced with a significant security and availability challenge. Automated, real-time mitigation techniques must be in place to eliminate the repercussions of a DDoS attack. This report contains observations from DDoS attack attempts against Corero customers in Q2 2017 and Q3 2017, as well as comparisons with previous quarters. The data represents the frequency and sophistication of DDoS attacks that organisations face today.

TRENDS

Increase in frequency 

We have just passed the first anniversary of what many believe to be one of the largest DDoS attacks recorded. Domain name service provider Dyn came under attack by two large and complex DDoS attacks against its managed DNS infrastructure. Because of...