Category Archives: Managed Security

Companies Continue to Wage a Battle with DDoS Attacks

DDoS-attacksDDoS or denial of service attack is an attempt to make the resources of a system unavailable to its users. Virtually all industries are susceptible to this type of attack. DDoS attacks are growing rapidly, and many countries are beginning to create legislation so that they are taken more seriously and treated as a real problem.

A10 Networks announced the results of a recent report commissioned by IDG Connect: “IDG Connect DDoS Survey”.

The main conclusion of the study, which is based on interviews with 120 senior decision-making IT in large organizations, cites that companies are currently waging a brutal battle against a growing army of online attackers. As a result, companies suffer an average of 15 DDoS year, with an offensive that causes an average of 17 hours of actual inactivity, including falls, blocking or denial of access to the client.

As DDoS attacks become more popular, they are also become harder to combat. So, and while the maximum utilization of bandwidth to carry out an attack reaches the middle of incredible 30-40 gigabits per second (Gbps), 59% of organizations confirmed to have experienced assault of more than 40 Gbps. Besides, most respondents (77%) also expect sophisticated multi-vector attacks patterns as the most dangerous type of DDoS attacks in the future.

More than half of the organizations surveyed confirmed their intention to increase their budgets for prevention of DDoS attacks in the next six months. The IT security teams are the most likely to lead efforts to prevent DDoS attacks (36%), followed closely by CSOs (26%) and CIOs (26%).

DDoS attacks are called ‘sudden death’ for good reason. If the brake is not put, costs for organizations could range from loss of business to the need to invest time in restoring the service and decrease in customer satisfaction. The good news is that IDG findings show that security teams are making the DDoS attack prevention a priority. With improved threat prevention system, they can make an immediate threat to their business in a notification level.

Among the key findings of the report include:

  • The type companies suffered an average of 15 DDoS a year, with large organizations experienced more interruptions.
  • One in five companies reported that downtime were more than 36 hours, with an average duration of 17 hours attacks.
  • 33% of respondents reported DDoS attacks over 40 Gbps with the most common are Flood UDP (23%), Slow Post (16%) and SYN Flood (14%).
  • 77% believe that the multi-vector attacks, including attacks at the application level and volume, are included, will be the most dangerous in the future.
  • More than half of respondents plan to increase their DDoS budgets (54%) in the next six months.
  • 53% of respondents confirmed that on premise protection is the most effective solution to deal with multi-vector DDoS threats, followed by the hybrid protection (34%), or a single solution as the on-premise appliance (19%).

The corporate segment in various industries believes that telecom operators and ISPs are those who are best positioned to protect them against such attacks. There is, therefore, a window of opportunity for operators to generate revenues by offering security services to mitigate DDoS attacks.

Five Top Trends That Will Define IT Landscape in 2016

Of all the important issues that keep executives awake, probably none is more important than to think “Are we keeping up to the date?”. The rapid pace of change in IT and business, in general, means that CIOs and other senior technologists cannot afford to be decentralized.

Where should you focus your energies as you build your to-do list for 2016? Forecast 2016 Computerworld survey of IT professional outlines five key areas – cloud computing, security, Internet of things, analysis, and the development of IT as a change-agent that promise to define the IT landscape in 2016.

IT As An Agent of Change

Finally, IT can move fully towards the center of the company in 2016 as the digital processing becomes an important strategic priority. Thanks to the economic growth, CIOs, and their IT organizations are well positioned to drive this change, increases in staff and a pronounced trend toward strategic spending.

Almost half (46%) of the 182 survey respondents said they are preparing for increased spending on technology, with anticipated budget increases averaging 14.7%. (Those numbers are higher than last year when 43% of respondents said they expected to increase spending, and the expected average was 13.1%.)

At the same time, 37% of respondents this year said they are planning to increase IT staff, compared with 24% last year. In addition, 42% of those hiring plans are looking for people with expertise in technology and business, that will articulate the value of IT in meeting business objectives.

This mixed knowledge will be essential for IT to achieve its primary goals in 2016 – 19% of the respondents said their mission is to generate new revenue or increase the existing ones in the next 12 months. Also, on the list is the acceleration of business processes and agility (cited by 40% of respondents) and improved collaboration with business units (35%).

While IT has made great progress in moving towards the strategic center of the company, there is more work to be done – mostly focuses on building relationships with business stakeholders.

Cloud Computing

As organizations are building an IT infrastructure for the future, there is no doubt that the cloud will play a key role. The real test is to figure out which model of cloud computing is the best choice for a particular company.

Almost half (48%) of the Forecast 2016 survey respondents said that cloud computing is an area for increased spending in their organizations, and 14% cited cloud initiatives as the draft most important technology for the coming year. Some 29% confirmed that they had already moved some business applications to the cloud with more plans; while 7% said they are in the process of migrating mission critical systems in a cloud environment.

On the other hand, 22% of respondents said their organizations are conducting beta testing or pilot programs covering the complete list of cloud delivery methods including private, public and hybrid options.

Now that the cloud is a standard element of IT architectures, the question facing CIOs is whether to use cloud-based systems and which deployment model is best for their organizations. Some things will be given a private cloud model while others take advantage of external cloud services or new types of delivery models.

Security

Data breaches made high profile last year (2015), with attention grabbing headlines. Maintaining the security is again at the top of IT budgets for the third year.

Exactly half of respondents this year (versus 46% last year) said security spending will increase in 2016; making safety the first choice among technology initiatives related to higher spending. When they were asked to identify the most important project of technology currently underway in their organizations, security came in second place (chosen by 12% of respondents), behind cloud computing by only two percentile points. And 16% of these identified security as their biggest challenge regarding leadership for the coming year; surpassed only by budget and economic pressures.

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The Internet of Things

The so-called Internet of Things (IoT) is no longer the stuff of science fiction, but a reality shortly for IT organizations across many industries. IoT technologies can be implemented in all kinds of practical uses, such as optimizing the supply chain through RFID, and performance monitoring focused on energy saving system.

Forecast 2016 Computerworld survey states 29% of respondents identified initiatives and IoT projects such as machine-to-machine and telematics as new areas of spending for this year. By comparison, last year, only 12% of respondents said that the work of IoT would be a new IT spending in 2015. Similarly, the percentage of the respondent said they planned to launch IoT projects in the next 12 months, which is 15% higher as compared to last year.

Analysis

As businesses pivot towards the digital market, the significant expenditure in the analysis of data will continue. The business analysis was No. 5 on the list of major projects for IT respondents and No. 3 in the technologies that they will get an increase in expenses over the next 12 months.

Having organized all your data, companies are now finding out how to use them effectively. At the same time, the analytical capabilities are being integrated into more and more applications and workflows for daily use, rather than being only available in separate tools.

The analysis also is infiltrating rapidly throughout the area of ​​machine learning, artificial intelligence and pattern recognition. This analysis can help discern patterns that are not apparent to humans.

The Wearables

While products like Google Glass and Apple Watch were announced with great fanfare, the reality is that companies are not willing to make practical use of the wearable systems, at least in the future foreseeable.

The wearable technology was last in the list of Forecast 2016 Computerworld survey, currently being evaluated in beta and pilot projects, with only 4% of respondents saying they had projects involving current wearables.

Moreover, 78% said they might work on wearable applications or anticipating the need to support wearables in the near future. And only 8% of these people said that the wearables would play a role in their commercial and technological operations while only 12% said they were adjusting their management strategies to include wearables mobile devices.