Dive Brief:
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A new report from Neustar that surveyed 1,005 directors, managers, CISOs, CSOs, CTOs and other C-suite executives about distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks found such attacks are increasingly costing enterprises.
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The report found that globally, 50% of organizations would lose $100,000 or more per hour in a peak-time DDoS related outage. Of those surveyed, 33% said they would lose $250,000 or more.
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Overall, the report found DDoS attacks "continue to pose a legitimate threat as a dangerous weapon used to create chaos and hold organizations hostage."
Dive Insight:
DDoS attacks can be debilitating, interrupting a businesses' services and potentially blocking them from bringing in revenue while the attack occurs. Of those surveyed, 13% said a DDoS attack during a peak time could cost them more than $1 million.
The report, which examined a number of industries, including technology, financial services, retail and government sectors in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, found worldwide 73% of companies suffered a DDoS attack in 2015, with almost half (45%) struck six or more times.
As a result, 76% of organizations said they are investing more in DDoS defense. The report also found IoT is a growing concern when it comes to DDoS attacks: 81% of companies that adopted IoT were attacked in 2015, with 43% reporting theft of finances, customer data and/or intellectual property.
"IoT is already here; but unfortunately its security is too often lagging behind," said Hank Skorny, NEUSTAR’s senior vice president of IoT. "Every IT professional knows it can take just one successful hack on an IoT device to access and compromise an entire network."
"As we continue to ingrain IoT devices into our electrical grid, hospitals, assembly lines and other essential areas of life, the stakes are too high to leave security to chance," Skorny said.
