DDoS Up 85% Q4 Of 2015, Says Shock New Study

A new report from the internet security firm Versign shows that Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks have increased in size, scope, and frequency. They are at an all time high and the report shows that there was an 85 per cent increase in DDoS attacks during the fourth quarter of 2015.

This is quite a striking rise in their frequency given that the number of attacks has almost doubled when compared to the forth quarter of 2014. There was also a 15 per cent increase in DDoS attacks when compared to the third quarter of 2015. The attacks have become more persistent with some targets being attacked up to 16 times during a three month time period.

Verisign also recorded an attack in 2015 which targeted a company in the telecommunications industry that was sent 125 million packets per second (Mpps) which resulted in 65 gigabits per second being sent to the companies’ servers. This is quite an increase from an attack in 2014 where a flood of 91 Mpps was used in a DDoS attack.

While the largest attack of 2015 was directed at a company in the telemarketing industry, Verisign is warning companies and organisations in all industries to be on the lookout and to prepare themselves for indiscriminate DDoS attacks which have also increased in number.

Companies involved in IT, cloud, and software services were the most targeted, with 32 per cent of all DDoS attacks directed at them. Media and entertainment companies were not far behind though and received 30 per cent of the attacks that occurred in 2015 while the financial sector was the least affected by DDoS attacks and only received 15 per cent.

DDoS attacks are certainly on the rise and Verisign recommends that companies augment their existing DNS capacity with a managed DNS service or with one that is hosted in the cloud.

Photo Credit: Duc Dao / Shutterstock

Author: Anthony Spadafora
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Published under license from ITProPortal.com