No Room For Cyber-Complacency

No Room for Cyber-Complacency: a Quarter of DDoS Attacks Claim Unintended Victims

Over a quarter of businesses that have been hit by a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack don’t think they were the intended target, highlighting that businesses can’t afford to be complacent when it comes to today’s threat landscape. According to research from Kaspersky Lab, 27 per cent of respondents said being an innocent bystander was the most likely reason for DDoS attacks on their organisation, suggesting that all businesses are in the firing line, even when they are not on the hit list.

The continued threat of DDoS attacks and the value that they bring to those that deploy them – from halting company operations, through to accessing confidential information or demanding a ransom – means that all businesses are potential targets. Despite this, organisations are still showing signs of cyber-complacency, with 28 per cent not using specialised anti-DDoS protection because they believe they are unlikely to be targeted by DDoS attacks.

However, this complacency is misplaced. Of the companies that experienced a security incident within the last 12 months, 44 per cent blamed a DDoS attack as being a contributing factor to that incident – up from a quarter (25 per cent) in 2016. This shows the impact of these types of attacks in today’s workplace and the need for organisations to proactively defend themselves against them.

It’s not just unintended attacks that firms must be ready to ward off at a moment’s notice. Nearly a quarter (23 per cent) of businesses believe a competitor was behind a DDoS attack on their organisation – most likely for espionage or disruption purposes; 24 per cent believed it was used as a distraction tactic to hide another attack from IT staff, and 24 per cent believe that a DDoS attack was designed to specifically disrupt their operations.

“Businesses can’t afford to display an ‘it won’t happen to me mentality’ towards DDoS attacks, but a worryingly large proportion of organisations are still doing so – despite today’s heightened threat landscape,” commented David Emm, Principal Security Researcher at Kaspersky Lab. “Given the number of attacks that companies have faced over the last year, businesses must take responsibility for their cybersecurity – no organisation is safe from DDoS attacks. There is no room for complacency when it comes to keeping operations running smoothly and critical data protected.”

With the financial consequences of DDoS attacks ranging from fighting against the attack itself, to a loss of revenue or business opportunities, it’s certainly better to be safe than sorry. That’s where Kaspersky DDoS Protection comes into play, providing a fully-integrated solution with advanced intelligence capabilities to protect businesses of all sizes from the most complex and high-volume DDoS attacks. More information can be found here.

*The IT Security Risks research is an annual survey conducted by Kaspersky Lab in conjunction with B2B International. In 2017 we asked 5,274 representatives of small, medium (50 to 999) and large businesses (1000+) from 29 countries about their views on IT security and the real incidents that they have had to deal with.