Survey cautions complacency around DDoS attacks

F5 Networks has published the findings of a survey into current concerns in the security community, conducted at the Infosecurity Europe 2015 trade show in London. It revealed that businesses are running the risk of becoming complacent over the threat of DDoS attacks. Instead, attention is turning to application data breaches, network attacks and malware. Despite this, 60% of respondents highlighted that they are worried about DDoS attacks targeting their organisation, with 39% revealing that it is likely that their organisation has already been targeted.

Tackling the threat, almost 40% of the organisations questioned are using a firewall to protect against DDoS attacks, with web application firewalls preferred by 26% of respondents. Worryingly, investment in specific DDoS protection, either on or off premise, scored much lower.

The evolving technology landscape is, according to the research, making security more challenging; 76% of respondents stated that, with the advent of cloud, the rise in off-premise IT and trends such as BYOD, the ability to maintain consistent security and availability policies has become harder in the last three years.

However, respondents are still looking to innovate and take on board new opportunities to drive efficiencies in their business. More than a quarter of respondents (27%) are looking to use software defined networking (SDN) technologies in their data centre in the near future, though 20% believe that SDN environments are more vulnerable to attacks. Specifically, the top three concerns are bugs and vulnerabilities in the applications (26%), the exploitation of centralised controllers (21%) and the development and deployment of malicious applications on controllers (15%).

The survey also revealed that more than half (52%) of the respondents are concerned about the Investigatory Powers Bill coming into force, with 32% citing worries around the government having more 'big brother' style powers. Interestingly, given the Infosecurity Europe 2015 community is largely responsible for safeguarding customer data across a range of industries, only 18% of individuals are concerned about government access to personal data and only 13% with corporate data.

When asked about the Internet of Things, respondents highlighted concerns around data loss (26%), security around managing an increasingly complex environment and securing customer data (23%) and the increasing complexities around managing connected devices (21%) as top of their agendas. Only 3% of respondents have no concerns around the Internet of Things, suggesting a need for the government and the broader business community to encourage collaboration, security and education in this space.