The cost of denial of service (DoS) attacks against data
centers.
DoS attacks occur when a criminal prevents legitimate users
from accessing information or services. By targeting a company’s computers and
its network connection an attacker can cause costly disruptions to operations
and damage to its reputation and trustworthiness. We believe a better
understanding of the cost of cyber crime and the consequences of DoS attacks
helps organizations to determine the appropriate amount of investment and
resources needed to address these threats.
Have high data center redundancy
We know with a UPS, redundancy matters. N+1 is good, 2N is
better and 2N+1 is best practice. Whether it’s UPS redundancy in the event of
an attack targeting the infrastructure or a full data center redundancy in the
event of an attack targeting a specific facility, redundancy is critical factor
in preventing DoS outages.
Emerson Network Power shares best practices and solutions to
equip customers against DoS attacks:
Plan ahead, and
have a strong command and control governance structure
Reinforce access control by limiting people who have access
to the network and changing credentials frequently. Ensure security measures
are in place to detect when someone or something out of the ordinary is trying to
find a way into the network.
Have high data center redundancy
Incorporate redundancy measures with the UPS. N+1 is good,
2N is better and 2N+1 is a best practice. Whether it’s UPS redundancy in the
event of an attack targeting the infrastructure or full data center redundancy
in the event of an attack targeting a specific facility, redundancy is a
critical factor in preventing DoS outages.
Use network visibility
and intelligence to ensure early threat awareness
Data centers have evolved into elaborate ecosystems, with
networks connected to everything and across systems. Managing security amid
network complexity requires visibility across the network to enable IT managers
to predict and prevent problems. Failing to do so would create vulnerable
access points for hackers to attack.
Secure your IT
infrastructure with back-up servers
Redundancy measures for servers can be put in place to
ensure critical availability of the network. A server with the same computing
capacity can be kept offline and activated in case of DoS outages or excessive
traffic at the primary server and can continue operations while the network is
down.
The following are key takeaways regarding the costs and
consequences of DoS attacks:
· DoS attacks can be costly. Our research shows a
wide variation or range in the cost of DoS attacks, from a low of $14,000 to a
high of $2.35 million per incident.
·
The cost of DoS is trending upward. The average
cost of a DoS attack in 2011 was $187,506 and this increased to $255,470 in
2015. The average cost has been trending upward over time (i.e., 31 percent
increase over five years).
· Our benchmark sample reveals that 49 percent of
DoS attacks caused a total or partial data center outage. Thirty-two percent of
organizations experienced a partial outage (i.e., one or more servers or racks
were impaired) and 17 percent experienced a total unplanned outage. § We examined six preventive control characteristics
that show differences between the outage and non-outage groups. We found
companies that withstand DoS attacks (non-outage group) are more likely to have
a command and control governance structure, high data center redundancy,
network intelligence tools, advance threat intelligence, well defined incident
response plans and enterprise deployment of anti-DoS tools.
· The cost of DoS is related to the existence of
data center outages. An attack that causes total outage results in an average
DoS cost of $610,300. In contrast, DoS attacks that do not result in outages
yield an average cost of only $36,800.
· DoS attacks are more costly than other
categories of cyberattacks, such as malicious insiders, malicious code and
web-based attacks.
·
Recovery and detection activities represent more
than half of the total internal cost of a DoS attack. Revenue losses and
disruption to normal operations represent 53 percent of the average external
cost consequence of a DoS attack.
· Average DoS costs vary by industry.
Organizations in financial services, technology and software, utilities and
energy and communications industries experience the highest average DoS costs.
In contrast, public sector, services, hospitality and research industry sectors
experience a much lower average cost.
To learn more, please contact JKS at:
Jks-systems.com
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