Mary-Louise Hoffman
Nearly 90 percent of 450 North American businesses surveyed by Neustar experienced repeat distributed denial of service attacks in 2013.
Data from Neustar’s “DDoS Attacks and Impacts Report” indicates that DDoS threats cost enterprises millions of dollars in downtime, brand damage and customer support, Neustar said Tuesday.
Neustar found that more DDoS perpetrators use a”smokescreening” method to distract information technology professionals in order to access bank accounts and customer data.
“Businesses should look out for shorter, more intense attacks without the traditionally expected extortion or policy demands,” said Rodney Joffe, Neustar senior vice president and senior technologist.
“It is critical that they protect themselves by dedicating staff to watch entry systems during attacks, making sure everything is patched and having dedicated DDoS protection,” Joffe added.
Almost twice as many organizations surveyed were hit by a DDoS attack last year, according to the report.
Forty-nine percent of DDoS victims reported that a malware or a virus was activated or installed during the attack and 55 percent also suffered theft.
Respondents to the Neustar survey included government, financial services, retail, healthcare, energy, telecommunications, media and Internet companies.
