This blog is the third in a series of four articles emphasizing the need for businesses to implement ‘Always-On in Real-Time’ DDoS security solutions.
In the first two blogs we introduced the value and risks of digital transformation and how increased connectivity via Network Effects depend heavily on connectivity to realize the primary benefits of both. We also highlighted the many risks that go unnoticed and their ability to wipe out an organization’s primary performance, accessibility and connectivity benefits.
With those cautionary thoughts already covered, we now turn our attention to the devastating impact that Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks can have on the lives of individuals and businesses.
Can you afford to lose $4 million per second?
A DDoS attack is where many compromised systems attack a single target by initiating a flood of incoming messages to overwhelm the system. This can cause a network to shut down or become unresponsive. This is distinct from a Denial of Service (DoS) attack which typically involves a much lower rate of traffic, sourced from a single device.
DDoS attacks are instantly devastating to an unprotected target. The objective of the cybercriminal can be one of more of the following:
Disruption: Shut down, or cause intermittent outages to, a specific website, service, or large portions of the internet. Currency: Extort immediate payment or damage the longer-term viability of the target organization. Data: Execute a parallel attack that could initiate a data breach or wipe/lock data for a ransom.
The direct financial cost is not the only attributable impact on your company from a DDoS incident. Other tangible effects that could have a far more severe impact in the long run include Financial loss: The average visible cost of a DDoS incident (without any additional attacks) is estimated to be ~$218K Remediation and compensatory costs: All organizations, revenue-dependent or not, will have some amount of remediation costs. Loss of customers and loss of customer confidence: When customers abandon a poorly performing, or unreachable, site the loss isn’t just in immediate revenue; it’s the potential loss of loyal customers, who may go to a competitor site and never return.
The effects of a DDoS incident will strangle the target organization’s communication routes – and those of its users/customers. This also limits the ability for the organization, its partners and more importantly its customers to understand why the expected service is not available.
An organization actively engaged in recovering from a DDoS cyber-incident, that wasn’t effectively mitigated, receives none of the expected technology transformation benefits and halts the connectivity benefits of the Network Effect they are trying to exploit. In terms of financial and customer loss, every second of delay resulting from a DDoS incident could be equivalent to $4 million (7% conversion rate from existing customers), and ~$49 million in lost opportunity for future revenues and customer adoption. Both of these revenue impact costs clearly dwarf the $218k of immediately visible costs to the business resulting from a DDoS incident.
Look out for the next in our series of blogs covering the need for ‘Always-On in Real-time’ DDoS security solutions as we continue to demonstrate exactly how every second counts.
Always-On in Real-Time
This is the era where the need for real-time protection is rising. The many supposed ‘always-on’ DDoS security offerings may be awake, but are they delivering the ‘real-time’ mitigation response in case of an attack?
You may already have a DDoS solution in place. That’s great and should provide some comfort to stretched CISOs. While there are many DDoS offerings available it is increasingly essential to have truly real-time mitigation response processes.
- When was the last time you considered the impact of a delay in protection processes when subjected to a DDoS attack?
- Is your protection delivered via a scrubbing service that needs to redirect traffic to its cloud before it can even begin to mitigate your DDoS attacks?
- Or, an on-premises service that will incur significant delays detecting and then redirecting affected traffic to an internal, out-of-band, scrubbing center?
Corero is dedicated to improving the security, availability, and success of the connected world with always on real-time on DDoS mitigation services.
Corero leads the industry with ‘always-on in real-time’ automatic DDoS mitigation solutions for enterprise, hosting and service provider customers around the world whatever the DDoS attack type. Our offerings span on-premises and cloud-hybrid architectures to deliver highly effective mitigation, automatically, at sub-second speeds. We preserve access to, and performance of, networks and services in the face of potentially damaging DDoS attacks. Business continuity is maximized, and protection costs are optimized.
Ready to learn more about how Corero supports enterprise, hosting and service provider customers? Download our latest report, powered by analyst firm Omnisperience & SynergySix Degrees: “The need for Always on in Real-Time for DDoS security solutions”.