53% of DDoS attacks result in additional compromise

DDoS attack volume has remained consistently high and these attacks cause real damage to organizations, according to Neustar. The global response also affirms the prevalent use of DDoS attacks to distract as “smokescreens” in concert with other malicious activities that result in additional compromise, such as viruses and ransomware.

“Distributed denial-of-service attacks are no longer isolated events limited to large, highly visible, targets. Sophisticated attacks hit companies of all sizes, in all industries,” said Rob Ayoub, research director, Security Products, IDC.

Neustar collected responses from more than 1,000 information security professionals, including CISOs, CSOs and CTOs to determine how DDoS attacks are impacting their organization and how they are mitigating the threat. Key findings include:

DDoS attacks show no sign of abating

The overwhelming majority of surveyed organizations (73 percent) suffered a DDoS attack. Eighty-five percent of attacked organizations were attacked more than once and 44 percent were attacked more than five times.

DDoS attacks are only the tip of the spear in complex assaults

The majority of organizations that suffered a DDoS attack (53 percent) also experienced some form of additional compromise. Forty-six percent of breached organizations discovered a virus, malware was activated at 37 percent of breached organizations, and ransomware was encountered at 15 percent of breached organizations.

DDoS attacks are time-consuming and expensive

It can take hours to detect and mitigate a DDoS attack at significant cost to the organization. Seventy-one percent of organizations took an hour or more to detect a DDoS attack and 72 percent took an additional hour or more to respond to the attack. Forty-nine percent of surveyed organizations would lose $100,000 or more per hour of downtime during these attacks.

Investment in DDoS protection shows promise for future

The overwhelming majority of respondents (76 percent) are investing more in DDoS protection than they were a year ago. The majority of respondents (53 percent) are using traditional firewalls, 47 percent are using a cloud service provider and 36 percent are using an on-premise DDoS appliance combined with a DDoS mitigation service (hybrid solution).

“As proof of the increasing threat and destructive nature of DDoS attacks, the industry has recently seen an incredibly complex, hacked IoT device-driven DDoS attack that surpassed 620 Gbps, lasted for multiple days, and crippled a high visibility website,” said Tom Pageler, Chief Security and Risk Officer of Neustar.

“Organizations should be concerned that DDoS attacks are growing increasingly sophisticated and relentless, frequently serving as the first stage of a multi-stage attack against an organization’s infrastructure,” said Rodney Joffe, Senior Vice President and Senior Technologist for Neustar. “There is a silver lining: as public attention is driving urgency to improve DDoS protection capabilities, organizations are increasingly realizing that having a DDoS mitigation solution in place is a requirement to keep your organization protected when a DDoS attack occurs.”