Cybersecurity is a top concern for businesses large and small as cyber criminals’ ever-evolving tactics continue to play havoc with organizations. Cybercrime, which includes everything from intellectual property theft to economic espionage and embezzlement, has skyrocketed over the past two years as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, not to mention, a burgeoning IoT market and a rise in DDoS-for-hire services, forcing nearly every industry to embrace new solutions and adapt to the changing threat landscape quickly.

Costs of cybercrime 

By the end of this year, the expected cost of cybercrime globally is $6 trillion, and this figure is expected to reach as high as $10.5 trillion in 2025, according to Cybersecurity Ventures. At a growth rate of 15% year over year, Cybersecurity Ventures also reports that cybercrime represents the greatest transfer of economic wealth in history, and attributes the projected surge partly to increased reporting of incidents and partly to the increased sophistication of cyber attacks.

The damage cost estimation is based on historical cybercrime figures including recent year-over-year growth, and a substantial increase in hacking activities sponsored by organized crime gangs and hostile nation states.

Cybercrime costs include lost productivity, theft of intellectual property, theft of personal and financial data, embezzlement, fraud, post-attack disruption to the normal course of business, restoration and deletion of hacked data and systems, and reputational damage.

Almost half of all cyber attacks are targeted against small businesses

Cyber attacks on all businesses, particularly small to medium sized businesses, are becoming more frequent, targeted, and sophisticated. According to Accenture’s Cost of Cybercrime Study, 43% of cyber attacks are aimed at small businesses, but only 14% have the means to prevent and respond to a DDoS attack.

Not only do DDoS attacks disrupt normal operations, they also cause damage to important IT assets and infrastructure that can be impossible to recover without the budget, resources or cybersecurity expertise to do so. Due to this, small businesses struggle to defend themselves against cyber threats.

According to Ponemon Institute’s State of Cybersecurity Report, small to medium sized businesses around the globe reported the recent experiences with cyber attacks:

45% say that their solutions are ineffective at mitigating attacks

66% have experienced a cyber attack in the past 12 months

69% say that cyber attacks are becoming more targeted

The most common types of attacks on small businesses include:

• Phishing / Social Engineering: 57%

• Compromised / Stolen Devices: 33%

• Credential Theft: 30%

Impact and severity of cyber attacks

Cyber attacks can impact organizations in many ways ranging from minor disruptions in operations to denied access to websites and severe service outage. Regardless of the type of cyber attack, every consequence has some form of cost, whether monetary or otherwise. Consequences of cybersecurity incidents oftentimes result in businesses suffering:

• Financial losses
• Loss of productivity
• Reputational damage
• Legal liability
• Business continuity problems

Ransomware on the increase

Ransomware attacks have now reached epidemic proportions and are the fastest growing form of cybercrime. At the end of 2016, a business fell victim to a ransomware attack every 40 seconds. This rose to every 11 seconds in 2021, according to the Cybersecurity Ventures Report. This type of cyber attack occurs when malicious software is used to cause damage to or block access to a computer system, network, server, client or data, until the victim pays a ransom requested by the attacker.

Cyber security experts and law enforcement agencies often advise organizations against meeting ransom demands. While the numbers of ransom victims who pay Bitcoin to attackers in the hope of reclaiming their data seems to be subsiding, the costs relating to ransomware attacks are literally going through the roof.

Anti-DDoS solutions are a must in this day and age

As the frequency and sophistication of cyber attacks continue to increase, the potential consequences of organizations not adopting preemptive anti-DDoS measures, increases the probability of becoming targets for perpetrators who are constantly enhancing their methods of attack.

In view of the fact that Communications Service Providers (CSPs) are often the first port of call that customers turn to when they come under attack, DDoS protection is no longer a feature that is “nice-to-have” for customers, but a business necessity in order to not only safeguard their own but also their customers’ network infrastructure.

Over recent years, we have witnessed a growing array of automated DDoS attacks leveraging multiple vectors, with the vast majority of these attacks being short in duration and low in volume, designed to avoid detection by traditional DDoS mitigation methods. Although such attacks are becoming increasingly difficult to detect manually, the good news is that DDoS Security-as-a-service specialists such as Nexusguard are highly proficient in deploying effective solutions that detect and mitigate these types of attacks swiftly and decisively, on your behalf.

Nexusguard offers a variety of anti-DDoS solutions:

• On-premises DDoS appliances

• Cloud-based DDoS services

• A true-hybrid solution comprising local protection (on-premises DDoS appliances) and cloud-based protection. To find out more, read our blog post True-Hybrid.

• DDoS protection as-a-service from your CSP. To learn more, see our blog post MSP to MSSP

For further information, please also read about Nexusguard’s Origin Protection and Application Protection.