What’s the biggest concern for businesses at the moment? Is it the economy or the threat posed by increasingly powerful and influential overseas competitors? Well, no doubt these issues are causing one or two sleepless nights for corporations, but the biggest concern of all is the threat of cyber-attack according to BT. Now the cyber-threat itself is nothing new: corporations have had their concerns for some time. So why are businesses particularly worried now? Well, according to BT’s global study it’s because disruptive cyber-attacks are becoming more sophisticated and more effective at breaching security defences, causing major disruption capable of bringing down systems for whole working days.
The aim of BT’s study was to explore the attitudes of IT managers of organisations in 11 different countries and regions around the world, and assess their readiness and capabilities when it came to dealing with DDoS attacks. BT’s research found that 41 per cent of organisations globally, and 36 per cent of businesses in the UK had been targeted by DDoS attacks over the last 12 months. More worrying still was the fact that of those organisations a large percentage had been targeted twice or more during the period. Distributed denial of service attacks can cause major problems for firms that have to deal with outages or slow connections: in fact they can have major long-term financial and reputational consequences. Businesses websites can go down, datacentres can be damaged and networks can slow down to the point where they are practically unusable.
The study found that nearly 59 per cent of those polled agreed that DDoS attacks were becoming more effective at subverting their organisation’s IT security measures, with attackers frequently adopting hybrid, or multi-vector attack tactics employed simultaneously across multiple platforms. Statistics show that the frequency of these multi-vector attacks has increased by 41 per cent in the past 12 months alone. Yet in spite of the seriousness of the problem, only 49 per cent of the organisations polled had a response plan in place to counter the threat. In fact only 8 per cent of UK decision makers strongly believed they had allocated sufficient resources to counteract an attack.
Commenting on the report, Mark Hughes, president of BT Security, said:
“DDoS attacks have evolved significantly in the last few years and are now a legitimate business concern. They can have a damaging effect on revenues and send an organisation into full crisis mode. Reputations, revenue and customer confidence are on the line following a DDoS attack, not to mention the upfront time and cost that it takes an organisation to recover following an attack. Finance, e-commerce companies and retailers in particular suffer when their websites or businesses are targeted.”
“Organisations need a higher level security solution to protect not only the network infrastructure but the devices that initially provide protection. The most efficient way to protect against the attack is raising awareness among employees and partnering with a trusted and capable supplier. We are working with leading global organisations to help them mitigate risks and put in place proactive defences. It is only when security is optimised that organisations are able to harness the possibilities of today’s connected world.”
If your business is concerned about the threat posed by DDoS attacks, and would like to put proactive defences in place to counteract this threat, then why not speak to Krypsys? Krypsys’ services are focused on helping you assess your security posture against current and evolving security threats and educating you on the risks to which you are exposed. We have a wealth of experience in security projects in both the public and private sectors and have worked with organisations to protect high value information assets such as trading platforms, e-commerce systems, data-centres and cloud services. We also work with leading IT security vendors and specialist consultancies to close the gaps in your own IT security strategy and to assist in streamlining and prioritising your risk management spending.
Whether you’re looking for help with penetration testing and security reviews, or are looking for advice on security compliance and web security solutions, Krypsys can help you. For more information on web security solutions, please contact Krypsys on 01273 044072 or [email protected].