Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks—in which cyber criminals take down an enterprise’s website or internet connection by flooding it with large volumes of traffic—are increasing rapidly in complexity, frequency, scale, and inflicted damage.
DDoS attacks are becoming more sophisticated and resulting in immediate and severe consequences. According to NETSCOUT Arbor’s 13th Annual Worldwide Infrastructure Security Report and ATLAS data, complexity involving multi-vector DDoS attacks increased 20% from the previous year, cost impacts range from $500 – $1,000 per minute, with an average of 850 DDoS attacks per hour. And while the size and duration of DDoS attacks vary over time, financial institutions tend to suffer more than other industries from the cost impact to the level of complexity and duration.
Are you protected from DDoS attacks?
Since banks and other financial institutions are frequent DDoS targets, most have some form of protection in place. However, whether or not that protection is sufficient enough to ensure business continuity can be a tricky question.
This is because the battleground keeps shifting. New, inexpensive tools enable even relatively unsophisticated aggressors to launch highly sophisticated attacks that are challenging to detect in time for effective mitigation. Attackers may switch from one type of assault to another until they find a vulnerability. They may also strike with a brief attack, gauge the response, and then hit again based on the defenses they detect.
DDoS attacks increased 20% from the previous year with cost impacts ranging from $500 – $1,000 per minute.
This level of complexity means that the best defense is one that constantly monitors the DDoS landscape and continually improves mitigation to meet new and more complex threats. In other words, a managed and highly specialized DDoS mitigation service that can detect and identify a specific threat the instance it starts with rapid response and mitigation measures to minimize downtown and help ensure business continuity.
