According to one cybersecurity firm’s H1 2024 data, customers in the telco, ISP and healthcare industries were the hottest high-profile targets

A cybersecurity firm has analyzed its user ecosystem data for 2024 to date, and summarized several trends from the data.

First, comparing the first half of 2024 with that of 2023, the data showed an increase of 111% in DDoS attacks encountered and mitigated. The largest application-layer DDoS attack was recorded in February 2024, which involved 4.7m Requests Per Second. In terms of customer regions, those in Australia (5.2%), Singapore (2.9%), and Japan (2.5%) were the most-targeted for application-layer DDoS attacks.

Second, the firm’s own data showed that Domain Name System (DNS) amplification attacks were growing. The average DNS amplification attack bandwidth had increased by 483% in the second half of 2023.

Third, comparing DDoS attack trends by industry (H1 2024 vs H1 2023) showed that customers in the Telecom and ISP industry saw the highest year-over-year growth, with a 548% increase in application-layer attacks. Healthcare saw a 236% increase, and customers in the gaming industry witnessed a 208% rise in attacks.

According to Daniel Toh, Chief Solutions Architect (APJ), Imperva, the firm publishing its ecosystem findings, the increases are expected to continue, largely due to their view of “AI lowering the attack barrier” and AI being used to “automate the creation and deployment of sophisticated DDoS attacks, enabling even novice hackers to launch powerful assaults,” including potential new variants of Mirai. Toh recommended organizations to implement active “always-on” DDoS protection or, at a minimum, an “on-demand” DDoS protection, ideally backed by an elastic cloud-based service capable of handling large volumetric attacks.