82% of DDoS attacks are under 1 Gbps. That’s not a typo.
These low-volume attacks fly under the radar, causing service degradation, spiking CPU usage, and creating blind spots in your network. You might chalk it up to poor performance or flaky connectivity. But make no mistake: these sub-saturation attacks are the early warnings of a bigger storm.
That’s one of the key takeaways from our 2025 Threat Intelligence Report. Whether you rely on service availability to deliver customer experiences or generate revenue, you need to read it.
Here’s why.
DDoS Isn’t Just Getting Bigger, It’s Getting Smarter
Threat actors aren’t just going for brute force anymore. They’re rotating attack vectors rapidly, switching from one method to another every 30–60 seconds. This sequencing overwhelms detection systems that aren’t built to adapt in real time.
Modern DDoS attacks are:
- Smaller in volume, but more persistent
- Designed to expose weaknesses deep inside your infrastructure
- Leveraging automation and AI to scale faster, more efficiently
You’re no longer just defending your internet edge. Attackers are probing everything from top-of-rack switches to layer 7 applications to find any soft spot they can exploit.
The Hidden Cost of Layer 7 Attacks
Application-layer (L7) attacks do not take you offline; they drain your critical resources and degrade performance. These attacks mimic legitimate traffic, triggering auto-scaling, increasing cloud spend, and burning CPU cycles on junk requests. Your systems stay online, but your OpEx balloons.
This is service degradation disguised as normal behavior. And unless you’re inspecting in the data path, you won’t catch it until it’s too late.
Visibility Isn’t Optional Anymore
You can’t stop what you can’t see.
Most organizations suffering from low-level DDoS don’t even realize it’s happening. They just see slower apps, unresponsive APIs, or network “weirdness.” Without real-time visibility and adaptive defenses, you’re operating blind.
Our report emphasizes a simple truth: automated detection and mitigation are no longer nice to have—they’re mission-critical.
Hybrid Defenses Are Now Table Stakes
There’s no single defense strategy that fits all.
That is why more service providers and enterprises are adopting a hybrid approach, with on-prem for instant response and cloud for scale. It’s not about choosing one or the other. It’s about ensuring you’re covered wherever the attack hits.
Our solutions uniquely integrate with Akamai’s cloud-based scrubbing services, creating a powerful, cost-effective hybrid architecture. You get instant on-prem mitigation paired with elastic, cloud-scale protection when attacks exceed local capacity. By leveraging this strategic partnership, you gain a seamless, adaptive defense that strengthens service availability and maximizes the value of both solutions.
What’s Next? The Role of AI
AI is a double-edged sword.
On the attack side, it’s accelerating tool creation and lowering the barrier to entry for malicious actors. On the defense side, it’s helping correlate events, flag anomalies, and feed real-time threat intelligence into our mitigation systems.
But it only works if your platform is built to leverage it.
Why This Report Matters
This year’s report doesn’t just recap what happened. It connects the dots between:
- Small, persistent attacks and major service outages
- AI-assisted threats and evolving attack patterns
- Availability risk and rising operational costs
You’ll also find guidance on what proactive steps to take now, including how automation, hybrid protection, and real-time analytics can keep your services resilient.
Conclusion
Threat actors are evolving. So must your defenses.
Don’t wait for the outage. Get the visibility, automation, and adaptive protection your network demands. Download the 2025 Threat Intelligence Report today and get ahead of what’s coming.
