Not all record-breaking numbers are feats or achievements towards which we all aspire. For example, in 2006, American teenager Matt Suter was destined to become the holder of the record for the ‘farthest distance thrown by a tornado and survived’, when he was flung, in an unconscious state, for a distance of almost 400 metres (398.37 metres) by an F2 tornado (meaning wind speeds of 181 to 253 kilometres per hour), yet later regained consciousness almost without a scratch. “We’ve recently had a very thought-provoking record-breaking number released for 2020 in the cybersecurity arena, and it’s not pretty,” says Risna Steenkamp, General Manager: ESM Division at value-added distributor Networks Unlimited. “Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks have crossed the 10 million mark dur...
Risna Steenkamp, General Manager: ESM Division at Networks Unlimited Africa Did you ever think about the ‘tax’ you pay as an organisation in the event of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack? In a nutshell, DDoS attacks by threat actors don’t only have a negative effect on businesses and their customers – they also take up quantities of internet bandwidth without paying for it. This means that the cost of this traffic falls on the shoulders of every business that does pay for the internet service. This is according to the NETSCOUT ‘2020 1H Threat Intelligence Report’, in which NETSCOUT, a leading global provider of service assurance, security and business analytics, introduces its DDoS Attack Coefficient. The figure summarises the amount of DDoS traffic going through regional netw...