The report reveals:
- Increase in Layer 7 DDoS attacks
- A 214% increase in average peak attack size compared to Q2 2015
- DDoS attacks have become more sophisticated and complex
Verisign released its Q2 2016 Distributed-Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Trends Report, which analyses key trends in online attacks, 
including attack statistics, behavioral trends and future outlook. Compiled on the basis of data derived through the cooperation of customers of Verisign DDoS Protection Services, and research conducted by Verisign iDefense Security Intelligence Services, the report highlights attack trends and mitigations.
Every industry is at risk as DDoS attacks continue to increase in frequency, consistency and complexity. Comparing year-over-year attack activity, Verisign mitigated 75% more attacks in Q2 2016 than in Q2 2015. The largest attack mitigated by Verisign in Q2 2016 peaked at 250+ Gbps before settling in at 200+ Gbps for almost two hours.
Verisign also observed a growing trend of low-volume application layer, or Layer 7, attacks that probe for vulnerabilities in application code and exploit HTTP/S field headers within request packets to disable applications. These attacks were frequently coupled with high-volume UDP flood attacks to distract the victim from the Layer 7 attack component, often requiring multiple and advanced filtering techniques.
The following key trends were observed from the report:
- The report shows that every industry is a target and that DDoS attacks can literally take a business or person offline
- Average peak attack size observed by Verisign continues to be high at 17.37 Gbps, a 214% increase year over year
- 64% of the DDoS attacks mitigated by Verisign in Q2 2016 employed more than one attack type
- User Datagram Protocol (UDP) flood attacks continue to dominate; accounting for approximately 56% of attacks in Q2 2016
- The most frequently targeted industry is IT Services/Cloud/SaaS, representing 45% of mitigation activity in Q2 2016, closely followed by the Financial industry at 23% and the Public Sector accounting for 14% of all mitigations
- There is an increase in application layer attacks, which are some of the most difficult attacks to mitigate because they mimic normal user behavior and are harder to identify.
