DDoS attacks on the rise

A report has claimed that close to 278 DDoS attacks against major businesses all over the world occur each and every hour.

NSFocus Information Technology, which  produced the report, has said that DDoS attacks are an ongoing challenge for every business with an online presence due to the sheer amount of data being generated.

The firm’s research supports another report released by Prolexic Technologies that highlighted an increase of over 370% in NTP (Network Time Protocol) amplification DDoS assaults last month.

Further, the firm believes this method of attack has soared this year thanks to new toolkits making it easier to create high-volume, high-bandwidth DDoS attacks online.

The general manager of security for Prolexic, Stuart Scholly, said:

“During the month of February, we saw the use of NTP amplification attacks surge 371 per cent against our client base.”

He also said that NTP amplification attacks have been among this year’s largest strikes so far.

The report says that the issue with this kind of attack is that it can be performed by anyone with access to the internet and a credit card. The trend, called ‘Hackernomics’ by the report, uses complex methods to cause as much damage as possible with minimum resources.

Companies and organisations can only really respond one way to such alarming statistics, and that is by ensuring that they have the highest level of cyber specialists on the payroll in order to ensure that threats are detected and incidents handled effectively. Further, posting information security vacancies on IT recruitment sites can only help the cause.