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Every Third Public-Facing Company Encounters DDoS Attacks, Kaspersky Lab finds

According to researchconducted by B2B International and Kaspersky Lab, 38% of companies providing online services (such as online shopping, kespersky logoonline media, and others) fell victim to DDoSattacks over the last 12 months. It provesthat Distributed Denial of Service attacksarecommon online business-related eventsrather thanjustisolatedincidents. That’s why it isso important to guarantee business continuity by taking steps to protect against DDoS attacks.

DDoSattacksaimtoblockaccess to a company’s online resources byoverloading them with “junk” requests. TodayDDoS attacks are easy and cheap for almost anyone to launch: costsarelow, a simple search will find people who can do it for you, and cryptocurrencies allow everyone to conceal their identities.Thisaccessibilitymeans that any company with rivals or opponents of any sort is at risk.

However, research suggests that ITcompanies suffer more than most from DDoS attacks: 49% of IT industry representatives reported that they had encountered at least one DDoSattack over the last year. Other businesses that rely on continuous online services to make profits also scored highly: firms engaged in e-commerce (44%), organizations providing telecommunications services (44%) and the media (42%). Financial companies arealso among the most frequently attacked organizations – 39% of them reportedanincident.

The consequences of DDoSattacks depend on their type and duration, as well as on the field of activity and distinctive features of the targeted company. Theresearch suggests that 13% of attacks render the target sites totally inaccessible. This fate most often befell media sites– 32% of media organizations reported that their web resources had been completely disabled due to a DDoS attack. But even if the attackersfailed to completely blockuser access to a company’s information resources, partial inaccessibility is also a serious problem. For example, 29% of respondents reported that they or their users had facedproblemsconducting online transactionsas a result ofaDDoSattack. This problem is especially significant for companies working in telecommunications and logistics – 49% and 45% respectively.

The number of companies affected varies from region to region. Even in North America, where, according to our research,DDoS attacks were less common than anywhere else in the world, nearly a quarter of the companies surveyed (24%) fell victim to them. In Europe, the situation is even more serious: almost a third of West-European (32%) and nearly half of Russian (49%) companiesfaced aDDoS attack.

Even though one in three companies have suffered from DDoS attacks, just 6% believe this type of incident is the most dangerous external cyberthreatthey face. However, taking down a site or preventing transactions is only the tip of the iceberg. A DDoS attack canlead toreputationallossesor legal claims overundelivered services. To ensure thatclients haveuninterrupted access to their online services, companies need tothink in advance about appropriate protection againstDDoS attacks“, said Eugene Vigovsky, Head of Kaspersky DDoS Protection, Kaspersky Lab.

Kaspersky DDoS Protectionis a solution that integrates Kaspersky Lab’sadvanced technologies to protect againstDDoSattacks. If a DDoSattack is detected by a special sensor, alltraffic sentto the client is redirected to special Kaspersky Lab equipment where “junk”requests are filtered out bysophisticatedindividual algorithms. These cleaning centers are also monitored by experts who canadjust the algorithms if required, even duringanattack. This approach avoids overloading of the online customer service even during asophisticatedorpreviously unknown attack. Read more about the principles of the solution in thebrochure.