Arbor Networks Holds Top Position in DDoS Solutions

In September, October and December of 2012 and January 2013, 26 US banks' retail websites experienced distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks that overwhelmed their systems. According to experts, these attacks were perpetrated to just disrupt company operations because no sensitive corporate or customer information was compromised. Those attacks were a wake-up call to financial institutions and any organization with an online presence. It highlighted the weakness of many systems and forced everyone to take the necessary precautions to protect their assets at all times.

A new DDoS Prevention Appliances report by Infonetics (News - Alert) Research reveals the market has grown 6 percent in the third quarter of 2013 compared to the previous year, with a total of $89 million. With the growth of cloud computing and mobile technology, more security service providers are consolidating to provide a suite of end-to-end security solutions. Earlier this month Akamai (News - Alert) purchased Prolexic, one of the most recognized DDoS threat specialists in the world for $307 million.

Although Arbor holds the top spot in this pace, the merger and acquisitions taking place in DDoS prevention will put pressure on the company to continue innovating with leading solutions in the market place.

According to the report, the threat of DDoS attacks will come from a variety of sources as organizations continue to increase their online presence, making them a bigger target. Increasingly the attacks are getting more complex and sophisticated with threats coming from social activism, state-sponsored electronic warfare, organized crime and others. A multi-layered attack will include application-layer attacks, state exhausting attacks and volumetric attacks (up to the limitation of the device), which negate the effectiveness of traditional perimeter security devices, such as firewalls and Intrusion (News - Alert) Prevention Systems (IPS).

This leaves enterprises of all sizes vulnerable if the right DDoS mitigation is not in place. An approach with multi-layered protection is needed to protect against attacks aimed at the security infrastructure of the enterprise.

According to Jeff Wilson, principal analyst for security at Infonetics Research (News - Alert), the growth of DDoS prevention appliances will continue as more attacks continue to plague industries across all sectors.

In its eighth annual Worldwide Infrastructure Security Report based on the survey data from 130 network operators and service providers around the world, Arbor Networks (News - Alert) revealed the DDoS threat organizations around the world face. The report showed data centers are increasingly being victimized and 78 percent of data center respondents said the targets of these attacks are more often than not the end customer. Additionally the frequency of attacks has increased, with 83 percent of respondents that were victimized now experiencing anywhere between one and 50 attacks each and every month.

DDoS prevention and mitigation is a must in today's business environment as more companies move their services to the cloud. They have to become aware of the shared risks as well as potential collateral damage they might experience. Sharing a data center with highly targeted assets such as an e-commerce and gaming site makes an organization more vulnerable, and knowing this and other critical pieces of information can be the difference between being open for business or temporarily unavailable.