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Financial Impact of Mirai DDoS Attack on Dyn Revealed in New Data

Several months after the now-infamous DDoS attack on DNS provider Dyn last October, the incident continues to make headlines. Earlier this month, reports emerged about the scale of customer losses that the company experienced in the wake of the attack. According to security ratings provider, BitSight, roughly 8% of Dyn’s customer base stopped using their services in the aftermath of the attack.

Dyn Customer Analysis: Before and After Mirai DDoS Attack

The data analyzed a representative sample of 178,000 domains hosted on Dyn before and immediately after the 2016 attacks, and revealed that more than 14,000 internet domains dropped Dyn as their DNS service provider in the wake of the incident (roughly 8%).

The findings are interesting because it’s rare that the financial fallout from a DDoS attack is laid out so clearly in the public eye. But when you consider the impact of the attack on Dyn’s customers – many of whom were cut off from the internet, and their customers, for several hours at a time – their decision to part ways with the provider is hardly surprising. As well as major US websites like Twitter, Spotify and PayPal being affected, numerous other companies worldwide also suffered connectivity issues, such as HSBC, BankWest and Ticketmaster. One can only speculate as to how much total revenue worldwide may have been lost as a result of the massive Mirai DDoS attack.

It’s true that there are some complexities in the BitSight figures. It isn’t clear whether the customer loss was sustained or mostly temporary – particularly given that the largest volume of domains that stopped using Dyn after the attacks were those who rely on a variety of different DNS providers, and could easily re-route their traffic. After all, it is often considered good practice for businesses concerned about DDoS attacks to ensure their critical websites rely on more than one DNS provider, and despite the much-publicized attack, Dyn is still considered to be one of the leading internet performance and DNS providers.

Impact of DDoS Attacks on Service Providers

But what is clear is this: DDoS attacks affecting service providers can have a serious effect on their customer relationships. It brings to mind the results of our 2016 DDoS Impact Study, which found that the single biggest fear from DDoS attacks among IT decision makers was the potential for losing the trust and confidence of customers. This is because network or website service availability is crucial to ensure customer trust and satisfaction, and vital to acquire new customers in a highly competitive market. When an end user is denied access to Internet-facing applications, or if latency issues obstruct the user experience, it immediately impacts the bottom line.

Fortunately, Corero offers industry-leading, real-time DDoS mitigation solutions that can be deployed at the very edge of the network or Internet peering points to effectively inspect all Internet traffic and mitigate DDoS attacks in real-time before they can inflict damage downstream.

To find out more, please contact us.