DDoS attacks set to get worse, Deloitte warns

Businesses are being urged to fully prepare for the threat presented by Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks - they are set to get worse in scope and scale, Deloitte says.

The company’s latest Technology, media and telecommunications predictions report suggests organisations may struggle to keep pace with the size, frequency and impact of the attacks, which try to take websites offline by flooding them with traffic.

From 2013 to 2015 the size of DDoS attacks increased by an average of 30 per cent a year and in 2016 the first attacks of one terabit per second or more were recorded - a trend set to continue in 2017.

Deloitte predicts that this year, an average of one attack a month will reach at least on terabit a second in size, with the number of attacks set to reach 10 million. The average attack size is forecast to be between 1.25Gbps and 1.5Gbps - big enough to take many websites offline.

Deloitte said a number of factors, including insecure internet of things devices and the ready availability of malware methodologies, are set to drive the escalation in DDoS attacks.

Phill Everson, head of cyber risk services at Deloitte, said: “DDoS attacks are the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of fake customers converging on a traditional shop at the same time. The shop struggles to identify genuine customers and quickly becomes overwhelmed.

The consequence could see an online commerce site temporarily unable to transact, or a government site not able to process tax returns.

“Businesses of all sizes should acknowledge the growing DDoS threat and consider how best to handle attacks of these magnitudes.”

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