A tough road is expected for businesses that rely on digital
technology this year as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks continue
to evolve, according to a report cited by IPC, a local cloud pioneer and the
only DDoS mitigation service provider in the country with a local attack
scrubbing facility.
The worldwide study conducted by IPC’s DDoS Mitigation partner Nexusguard revealed a
380% increase in frequency of attacks in the first quarter of 2017. “More than
16,600 attacks were recorded during the first quarter, with notable ones being
an enormous 275Gbps attack that took place during Valentine’s Day and a lengthy
attack spanning 4,060 minutes which occurred during the Chinese New Year,” said
Juniman
Kasman, Chief Technology Officer of Nexusguard.
Additionally, the study shows that the percentage of days with
large attacks also grew substantially. “The percentage of days with sizeable
attacks (larger than 10Gbps) grew considerably between January (48.39%) and
March (64.29%),” added Kasman.
For Dave De Leon, IPC’s Chief Operating Officer, the rising
complexity of DDoS attacks can adversely affect companies who utilize digital
means for business. “Online businesses have much to lose from going offline due
to DDoS attacks. The ecommerce industry is a very vulnerable sector because
operations rely heavily on the Internet. One successful attack can lead to huge
financial losses. If you factor in the risk of losing customers, then we might
be talking about millions.”
Online transactions paralyzed
During a DDoS attack, cybercriminals flood a website with traffic
coming from numerous requests in order to overwhelm its server. Due to the
staggering amount of incoming traffic, the server is unable to support it and
eventually crashes. Its main objective is to prevent users — both customers and
the staff of the company — from accessing the site. To put it plainly, DDoS
attacks knock perfectly healthy websites offline by overwhelming them.
The threat of evolving DDoS attacks is at a pivotal moment where
the practice of online shopping is growing at an exponential rate, as revealed
in an eMarketer study that forecasts a
global e-commerce market amounting to $2.290 trillion this year. IPC believes
that this growth will further attract criminals to launch more attacks.
“An inaccessible website is possibly the worst scenario any
e-commerce company could experience. Aside from not being able to conduct
business, their reputation is also at stake since an ongoing attack can disrupt
the shopping experience of customers. If not remedied, irate customers will
eventually choose other sites.” said De Leon. “As a solution, we urge online
sellers to find a DDoS mitigation provider that can fend off large-scale
attacks and assure them of a stable connection amidst these online disasters.”
Together with partner Nexusguard, IPC’s Premium DDoS Mitigation solution ensures business continuity in light of DDoS attacks.
The company’s DDoS Mitigation experts employ GRE (Generic Route Encapsulation)
Tunnel solutions that easily and constantly avert any incoming malicious
traffic that can take down a website. Round-the-clock monitoring of the network
is also part of the service, as a way to quickly implement security measures in
the event of an attack.
“DDoS Mitigation should be an essential part of an e-commerce
company’s cybersecurity strategy. DDoS attacks are specialized threats designed
to bring down a company’s website. It all boils down to how much an hour or a
day of downtime will cost you. If you can’t even begin to imagine the losses,
then it’s time to talk to a DDoS Mitigation expert,” said De Leon.
For more information on how to protect your online business from
DDoS attacks, visit http://ipc.ph/en/ddos/.
Ross is known as the Pambansang Blogger ng Pilipinas - An Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Professional by profession and a Social Media Evangelist by heart.
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