Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are more than an inconvenience; they paralyze operations and cause significant direct and indirect costs to those affected. Over 23,000 DDoS attacks are recorded per day, leaving companies to deal with disrupted online services. Recently, New Zealand’s Stock Exchange (NZX) was hit by a large DDoS attack for four consecutive days which led to a stock market closure that barred many from trading.
While DDoS attacks similar to New Zealand’s aren’t specifically targeting communication service providers (CSPs), CSP services are collateral damage as attacks pass through their networks to reach their victims. Bursts of extreme DDoS traffic can prevent service delivery and even cause high infrastructure costs due to failures of routers, servers, and other network elements.