There’s a large disparity separating the degree to which service providers feel threatened by distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) and how prepared they are to prevent or mitigate them, according to a new report from Black Lotus, which specializes in providing security against DDoD threats.
In its “DDoS Attacks: The Service Provider Impact” report Black Lotus “shares data and insights into the types and sizes of attacks these service providers face, as well as how they respond to these attacks,” the company explains in a press release.
For example, Black Lotus found that while 92 percent of survey participants “have some form of DDoS protection in place, it isn’t sufficient to stop an attack before damage is done.”
DDoS Attacks on Service Providers
Most survey respondents reported rising operational expenses incurred as a result of DDoS attacks. In addition, according to Black Lotus’s findings:
- 61 percent of providers feel that DDoS is a threat to their businesses;
- Only 16 percent of the providers surveyed indicated that they had been rarely or never hit by a DDoS attack;
- The top three industries with customers affected by DDoS attacks are managed hosting solutions (MHS), voice over IP (VoIP) and platform as a service (PaaS);
- In case of a DDoS attack, 34 percent of the surveyed providers remove the targeted customer, and 52 percent temporarily null route or block the problem customer;
- 64 percent of PaaS providers have been impacted by DDoS;
- 56 percent of MHS providers have been impacted by DDoS;
- 52 percent of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) providers have been impacted by DDoS.
All told, 129 service providers participated in Black Lotus’s electronic survey. Over 35 percent reported being the victim of a DDoS attack once or more times per week.
“DDoS attacks lasting hours or even minutes can lead to loss of revenue and customers, making DDoS protection no longer a luxury, but a necessity,” Black Lotus co-founder and Chief Security Officer Shawn Marck was quoted as saying.
“DDoS attacks will continue to grow in scale and severity thanks to increasingly powerful (and readily available) attack tools, the multiple points of Internet vulnerability and increased dependence on the Internet. Enterprises have to move from thinking of DDoS as a possibility, to treating it as an eventuality.”
At 52 percent, small companies employing from one to 999 worldwide made up the largest group represented in Black Lotus’s DDoS service provider survey. Organizations with less than 250 employees was the largest sub-group, at 20 percent.
Across job types, IT-related administrators was the largest group, making up 65 percent of survey respondents. Network administrators (13 percent) and IT-related directors (10 percent) were the largest occupational groups selected.
