Businesses are falling behind in the race to protect themselves from Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, due a reliance on others to do the job for them and a general lack of knowledge about how to protect themselves against becoming a victim. 46% of organisations in the Middle East, Turkey and Africa (META) region do not use anti-DDoS solutions but rely on their ISP to shield them from attacks, however this approach leaves many vulnerable and at risk of suffering from data loss and business disruption.

DDoS attacks are one of the biggest cyberthreats facing organisations today, with the potential to quickly bring a halt to business operations and lead to significant financial and reputational damage. However, despite 40% of businesses in the META region feeling vulnerable to this type of attack, many (51%) admit that although they’d like to know more, they currently have little knowledge about the threat, relying instead on technology partners including their ISP (46%) and data centre provider (28%).

But, as we witnessed with the high-profile DDoS attack which brought down the servers of Dyn in 2016 – affecting much of America’s Internet access – this approach could put companies at risk. An attack on a data centre provider or ISP could do just as much damage to its partners and customers if the situation is not managed properly, making it important for businesses to understand the risks around DDoS and to take their own precautions.

Businesses that do not have a clear strategy on how to react to DDoS attacks may lack basic countermeasures such as reserve servers and data backups. As a result, they may be unprepared, hindering their ability to respond to the inevitable attack when it does come. For those that do actively protect themselves against DDoS attacks, this has only been due to being a victim in the past (30%) or because they are required to do so for regulatory purposes (35%).

Businesses that want to be better prepared for DDoS should gain a better understanding of the severity of such attacks and take responsibility for securing their company perimeters from the increasing risk. This includes improving both prevention and response plans, to safeguard corporate data and ensure operations are not affected.

“DDoS attacks are showing no signs of slowing down and every business – no matter what its size or level of IT expertise – can be a victim. Businesses must ensure they are prepared to defend against powerful and sophisticated attacks, utilising insight from experienced personnel in tandem with next-generation technology to ensure operations stay up and running and business-critical data remains protected,” commented Alexey Kiselev, Project Manager on the Kaspersky DDoS Protection team.

*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 (1000+) businesses from 29 countries about their views on IT security and the real incidents that they have had to deal with.

Courtesy:  Kaspersky Lab

Kaspersky Lab is a global cybersecurity company, which has been operating in the market for over 20 years.