The DDoS attack landscape in Europe — declining?

The DDoS attack landscape in Europe is constant flux.

But, what is clear is that Friday night is DDoS night, especially between 9pm and 10pm — this was the most common time for attacks in Q1 2019, according to cloud anti-DDoS vendor Link11. This seems to be timed to hit companies when the lowest number of IT staff are available.

The fewest attacks started between 8am and 9am on working weekdays.

DDoS attacks in Europe declining

The data revealed that in Q1 the number of DDoS attacks in Europe declined by nearly 20% compared with Q4 2018, to 11,177 from 13,910.

Cyber crime on the rise: DDoS attack volumes have trebled in past year, says study

The volume and complexity of attacks continued to grow in Europe during the final quarter of 2018, according to Link11’s Q4 2018 DDoS statistics. Read here

The average DDoS attack volume also shrank by 24% to 3.8Gbps (from 5Gbps in Q4 2018), but the number of hyper-scale attacks of over 80Gbps doubled compared with the previous quarter.

Attack durations are also getting longer, with the average attack duration in March lasting 13 minutes, compared with just 8 minutes in January 2019.

The longest attack lasted 718 minutes.

Marc Wilczek, Link11 managing director said: “The DDoS landscape is constantly evolving, and this latest data shows how important it is to secure business processes and digital infrastructures against DDoS attacks. Perpetrators are targeting all levels of corporate IT, which makes it all the more important to proactively identify potential DDoS vulnerabilities. Signature-based attack detection is no longer sufficient in view of dynamic threat situations. The proactive use of artificial intelligence and machine learning, which recognise the differentiated behaviour strategies of attackers, is a must.”

The evolution of DDoS attacks and defences

Aatish Pattni, regional director, UK & Ireland, Link11, explores in Information Age how DDoS attacks have grown in size and sophistication over the last two decades. Read here

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Nick Ismail

Nick Ismail is a former editor for Information Age (from 2018 to 2022) before moving on to become Global Head of Brand Journalism at HCLTech. He has a particular interest in smart technologies, AI and...

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