Several agencies lack effective direction on cybersecurity

Despite all the attention now concentrated on cybersecurity, a major number of agencies say they aren’t sure they know the most effective protection strategy to combat and tackle these kinds of attacks.

This deficiency of knowledge and protection “is putting businesses across the globe at threat of grinding to a halt,” in accordance to the new Corporate IT Security Risks survey from Kaspersky Lab.

The study discovered that 39% of agencies appreciate that they are not confident that they have precise IT security safeguards for cybersecurity in place.

“DDoS attacks in specific can rapidly incapacitate a targeted business’s workflow, bringing business-critical procedures to a stop,” the study pointed out. Although, the research discovered that 16% of businesses aren’t protected from DDoS attacks at all, and 49% depend on built-in hardware for protection.

“This isn’t effective against the increasing number of large-scale attacks and ‘smart’ DDoS attacks which are difficult to filter with standard methods,” the report added.

In several cases, agencies assume that they are already secured for cybersecurity from these kinds of attacks, but that confidence is mostly misplaced.

Some 40% of the agencies surveyed fail to put measures in place because they consider that their Internet service provider (ISP) will give protection. The survey discovered that 30% believe that their data center or infrastructure partners will secure them.

“The reality is that these agencies mostly secure businesses from large-scale or standard attacks, while ‘smart’ attacks, such as those utilizing encryption or imitating user behavior, need an expert approach,” the study elaborates.

Perhaps most surprisingly, the survey discovered that almost a third of agencies fail to take action because they consider they are unlikely to be targeted by DDoS attacks. Some 12% even appreciate that they consider that a small amount of downtime because of DDoS would not cause a major problem for the company.

“The reality is that any company can be targeted because such attacks are convenient for cybercriminals to launch. What is more, the potential cost of a single attack can be in the millions,” in accordance to the report.

“As we have seen with the recent attacks, DDoS is immensely disruptive, and on the rise,” claims Kirill Ilganaev, head of Kaspersky DDoS protection at Kaspersky Lab. “When hackers launch a DDoS attack, the damage can be devastating for the business that is being targeted because it disables a online presence of company. As an outcome business workflow comes to a halt, mission-critical processes can’t be completed and reputations can be ruined.”

“Online services and IT infrastructure are merely too significant to leave unguarded,” Ilganaev sustains. “That is why specialized DDoS protection solution should be considered an important part of any effective protection strategy in business today.”