IDC survey finds that the average DNS attack cost rises 49 percent
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- Published: Friday, 21 June 2019 09:07
The 2019 Global DNS Threat Report, conducted by IDC and sponsored by EfficientIP, states that over the past year, organizations faced on average more than nine DNS attacks, an increase of 34 percent. Costs went up 49 percent, meaning that one in five businesses lost over $1 million per attack.
Other issues highlighted by the study, now in its fifth year, include the broad range and changing popularity of attack types, ranging from volumetric to low signal, including phishing, 47 percent, malware-based attacks, 39 percent, and old-school DDoS, 30 percent.
Also highlighted were the greater consequences of not securing the DNS network layer against all possible attacks. No sector was spared, leaving organizations open to a range of advanced effects from compromised brand reputation to losing business.
Romain Fouchereau, Research Manager European Security at IDC, says “With an average cost of $1m per attack, and a constant rise in frequency, organizations just cannot afford to ignore DNS security and need to implement it as an integral part of the strategic functional area of their security posture to protect their data and services.”
Three-in-five, 63 percent, of organizations suffered application downtime, 45 percent had their websites compromised, and one-quarter, 27 percent, experienced business downtime as a direct consequence. In addition, one-quarter, 26 percent, of businesses had lost brand equity due to DNS attacks.
Data theft via DNS continues to be a problem. To protect against this, organizations are prioritizing securing network endpoints, 32 percent, and looking for better DNS traffic monitoring, 29 percent.
David Williamson, CEO of EfficientIP summarized the research “While these figures are the worst we have seen in five years of research, the good news is that the importance of DNS is at last being widely recognized by businesses. Mainstream organizations are now starting to leverage DNS as a key part of their security strategy to help with threat intelligence, policy control and automation, thus building a good foundation for their zero trust plan."
The 2019 Global DNS Threat Report
The research was conducted by IDC from January to April 2019. The results are based on 904 respondents in three regions - North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. Respondents included CISOs, CIOs, CTOs, IT Managers, Security Managers and Network Managers.
To read the full report please click here (registration required).
