Half of companies under DDoS attack have critical data stolen

Neustar surveyed IT professionals from across EMEA to understand the impact of DDoS attacks.

40 percent of companies estimate hourly losses of over £100,000 at peak times during a DDoS outage, a 470 percent rise since the last Neustar survey almost a year ago.

Multiple attacks are also becoming more prevalent and are lasting even longer than those recorded in the last survey, with more than a third of attacks affecting businesses for more than 24 hours. Additionally, 52 percent of companies attacked find themselves the victims of theft, with 24 percent more businesses reporting loss of customer data, intellectual property or money during a DDoS attack compared to last year.

Companies are fighting back and a third of all EMEA businesses are now using hybrid DDoS protection, combining the best of on-premise hardware and cloud-based solutions to tackle these attacks. In the financial sector in particular, the figure of those using a hybrid solution jumps to around 40 percent; a reaction to high profile and repeated targeting of financial institutions.

According to the survey, 69 percent of financial institutions reported more than six DDoS attacks per year by hacktivists making a political statement, and thieves targeting money rich resources. Where big money is involved, for example where a DDoS attack could cost over £100,000 per hour, the survey indicates a massive 80 percent of financial institutions deploying a hybrid DDoS solution.

“The online community needs to develop industry-based mitigation technologies that incorporate mechanisms to distribute attack source information into ISPs, so they can squelch the attacks closer to the source. It needs to improve visibility and understanding of activities in the criminal underground, so their command and control structures can be disabled rapidly. Finally, it’s important to improve attribution and law enforcement actions to identify perpetrators and bring them to justice,” said Rodney Joffe, Senior Vice President and Technology Fellow at Neustar.