Industry Trends & Insights

The largest modern business challenge, may not be what you would expect

By / September 1, 2019

State of the industry

The average cost for each lost or stolen record containing sensitive and confidential information has increased by 4.8 percent year over year, to $148.

"Mega breaches", ranging from 1 million, to 50 million records lost, are estimated to cost companies between $40 million, and $350 million respectively.

In addition to cost, a global study puts the likelihood of a company suffering a material data breach involving 10,000 lost or stolen records in the next 24 months, as high as 26 percent.

The likelihood of a company suffering a material data breach involving 10,000 lost or stolen records in the next 24 months, is as high as 26 percent.

Amazingly, many companies still are not taking security seriously enough. Taking a reactive approach will no longer work, as a threat may already be causing massive damage, by the time it's identified.

Battling a massive increase

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, which overload a server with traffic to push it offline, are steadily increasing, and we have also seen a massive rise in new threats such as DNS tunneling. DNS tunneling is when the Domain Name System protocol, is used to maliciously steal data. DNS water torture, is another tactic (also known as a Slow Drip DDoS attack), which makes a victim's domains appear inaccessible.

The repercussions of these breaches aren't just short-term monetary issues, due to application downtime. They can also include long-term loss of business, due to permanent brand damage. 1,000 participants surveyed in 2018 regarding DNS attacks, determined that 27 percent of U.S. respondents, didn't feel DNS security was critical to their businesses. In addition, a vast majority weren't even aware of the different types of vulnerabilities.

How vulnerable are US businesses to DNS attacks?

Of the U.S. respondents to the survey, as many as 31 percent were involved in volumetric attacks (such as DDoS or DNS amplification). 10 percent were involved in zero-day vulnerabilities. An additional 14 percent of respondents, were subject to DNS-based malware attacks.

This certainly points to U.S. companies being susceptible to DNS attacks, and as a result, businesses are losing considerable amounts of money.

What is the extent of damage to business?

As many as 25 percent of respondents had to shut down their servers. 19 percent closed down specific affected processes and connections, and 39 percent needed six hours or more, to mitigate an attack. This is a lot of wasted time where applications are down, and people are not able to do their jobs. These companies are risking both short, and long-term damage to business by inadequate, and reactive DNS security measures.

Reactive measures to security threats, such as shutting down servers, are causing damage to business availability, and reputation. Almost 16 percent of respondents have experienced loss of business from an attack, and almost 13 percent have suffered brand damage. 25 percent have had their websites compromised, and as high as 43 percent, have been impacted by application downtime.

We have solutions

It is critical to stay ahead of threats by using security solutions, and systems, that can protect against an increasingly large, and complex range of attacks. A consistent, unified, and streamlined process, is required to meet the needs of the constantly changing security environment.

It is critical to stay ahead of threats by using security solutions, and systems, that can protect against an increasingly large, and complex range of attacks.

There are many dependable solutions available that offer high availability, and ensure no impact on business activity, alongside a highly secure network. These solutions guarantee reliability, scalability, and flexibility, while also speeding up deployment, reducing costs, and increasing productivity. This should be of particular interest to the channel, due to the many aspects of deployment, and continued involvement with customers.

Contact AppSmart today to protect your networks with the latest security from our cutting edge vendor solutions.

Phone: 1-866-456-3211

Email: partnersupport@appsmart.com

Resources

Williamson, David. “The Real Cost of Security Attacks to U.S. Business.” The State of DNS Security in U.S. Organizations, 9 Nov. 2016, www.channelinsider.com/blogs/security/the-real-cost-of-security-attacks-to-u.s.-business.html.