Akamai CSO: DDoS Attacks 'Absolutely' Rising

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Akamai Chief Security Officer Andy Ellis told CRNtv that the company is ’absolutely seeing a rise in DDoS attacks’ against both small and large companies.

Ellis said most companies are very surprised when they experience their first distributed denial-of-service attack--– and therein lies the problem. The best defense against DDoS attacks is being prepared and finding the right balance of employee accessibility and security measures.

’It can be a really tough challenge for a lot of companies, and the important thing to look at is how to separate what employees need to do,’ Ellis said. He elaborated that building virtual walls between a main network and employee activities is key: If an employee is breached and there are no such walls, adversaries can immediately access the network.

Ellis said the company’s fourth-quarter State of the Internet report focused on the ’democratization of attacking tools.’ Rather than combating a handful of good attackers, companies now need to be prepared for adversaries who can develop cutting-edge hacking skills in a short period of time.

’Now what we see is that when there is a vulnerability that comes out, the attack gets packaged up and distributed so quickly that even an adversary that a week ago wasn’t able to do anything, with a little diligence, can be better than most adversaries were even 10 years ago,’ Ellis said.

PUBLISHED FEB. 9, 2015