Most companies in the U.K. aren’t ready to handle a DDoS attack

New research released by Neustar suggests that the majority of UK businesses are unprepared to cope with the threat of DDoS attacks. DDoS attacks are a common method for cyberattacks to disrupt an online businesses. A DDoS attack uses compromised computer systems to attack a single target, sending traffic from multiple points of origin in a flow which often overwhelms a system, causing it to deny authentic traffic access to services.

Neustar, a trusted, neutral provider of real-time information and analytics, has today announced findings from its second annual United Kingdom DDoS Attacks & Impact Report. 2014: The Danger Deepens is a survey of IT professionals across the United Kingdom to understand the impact of DDoS attacks on business as well as the ways in which companies are managing the crisis and how attitudes towards DDoS attacks have changed over the past year. Among the key findings from the survey, a staggering 32% of companies estimate losses of over £240,000 per day during a DDoS outage. Additionally, larger DDoS attacks are becoming more frequent with a 200% increase in attacks affecting bandwidth between 1-20 Gbps, and a significant increase in attacks on bandwidth with a magnitude of 100 Gbps or more.