Research carried out by Kaspersky Lab and B2B International has revealed that only 50% of companies regard countermeasures against distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks as an important component of IT security. It means that the other 50% of companies may prove to be unprepared for a sudden attack, which could damage both their finances and their reputation as a result of the unavailability of internet services.

Different industries have different views on how important it is to protect against DDoS attacks. For example, 60% of financial institutions, energy companies and utility services are conscious of the need of protection against DDoS attacks. This is the highest percentage of any industry.

But it seems quite low considering that IT continuity is critical for these structures as they affect the well-being of many people. There is also a noticeable difference of opinion among different sized organizations: only 38% of small businesses consider protection against DDoS attacks an important component of IT security,but for big companies this figure reaches 60%.

In recent years, DDoS attacks have become a common tool for cybercriminals and their clients. There are many different reasons for organizing these attacks — hooliganism, dishonest competition, blackmail. Currently the price to order a large-scale attack starts from just $50. Each year brings increasing numbers of DDoS attack schemes, so IT professionals at any company need to consider ways of protecting against them.

According to the research, 23% of companies include maintaining the continuity of business processes in the top 3 most important tasks of their IT services. Interestingly the survey found no clear correlation between the level of threat faced in reality and the recognition of the need for DDoS protection.

For instance, the sectors with public facing online services most affected by these incidents included IT companies (49%), e-commerce (44%), telecom (44%) and the media (42%). At the same time, countermeasures against DDoS were named as important by 53% of telecoms companies, 50% of IT businesses and only 41% of e-commerce and 38% of media companies.

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/50-of-companies-unprepared-for-DDoS-attacks-Report/articleshow/45575197.cms