eCrime Congress in Germany: Restoring the Equilibrium of Attackers Vs. Defenders

Last week, I attended eCrime Congress in Frankfurt, Germany. Held on January 30,Radware was one of the sponsors of the event, which featured a lecture track that ran throughout the day and included breaks for the sponsors’ pavilion.

The event organizers created a well-balanced agenda that discussed the constant battle of defenders against attackers. Lectures covered topics including threats, best practices and solutions, which were all highly relevant to today’s changing business environment that spans over enterprise networks, hybrid clouds and social networking.

Presenting on behalf of Radware, I had the opportunity to address a unique characteristic of today’s security environment.- The fact that when it comes to DDoS attacks, organizations are bringing a knife to a gunfight. (See the Radware 2012 global security report for more in-depth information).

The specific theme of my lecture focused on Restoring the Equilibrium. Simply put, we’ve seen major retailers, travel reservations businesses, banks, and oil and manufacturing companies going offline due to DDoS attacks. This continues to be the case even though many of them have invested in network security. To better understand why this happens (and why equilibrium has been disrupted) as well as how to prepare to fend off future attacks (restoring the equilibrium) – I invite you to download my eCrime Congress presentation “Attackers vs. Defenders – Restoring the Equilibrium” and review it.

Key findings presented in the eCrime Congress session include:

• 65% of organizations had an average of 3 DDoS attacks in the past 12 months
• $3M is the average annual cost of DDoS attacks per organization
• Organizations are prepared for yesterday’s attack trends in which the attack period was very short (seconds) and focused on the pre- and post attack stages
• Attackers exploit organizations limited ability to handle long lasting attacks and break their defenses easily

The key conclusions are:

• Restoring the equilibrium requires organizations to build capabilities to sustain a long sophisticated cyber attack
• Attack tools are known. Test your systems in advance
• Position your DDoS protection in the cloud and on premises