Arbor Networks, via its Worldwide Infrastructure Security Report (WISR), provides new insights on some of the most critical security challenges facing the network operators. The annual survey which had 220 responses, up from 130 last year, from a mix of Tier 1 and Tier 2/3 service providers as well as hosting, mobile, enterprise and other types of network operators from around the world, provides a real-world view of the security threats that organizations face and the strategies they adopt to address them.
The survey highlights that organizations face 36% increase in Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), with botted hosts as their number one concern and more than half (57%) do not have a solution deployed especially to address attacks coming through employee-owned devices which access the corporate network. The attacks against mobile networks have more than doubled, indicating DDoS attacks to the mobile Internet (Gi) infrastructure, with more than 20 percent respondents saying that they have suffered a customer-visible outage due to security incidents. The DDoS type of attacks are seing a dramatic increase in size, with this year's attacks peaking at 309 Gbps and measuring larger than 100 Gbps.
Another new trend that has emerged is the prevalence of Application-layer attacks, targeting encrypted Web services (HTTPS), with an increase of 17 percent over last year.
Other security vulnerabilties reported by the respondents of the survey are DDoS attacks towards data centers and customer impacting high-profile DNS reflection/amplification related attacks.
“From the ISP to the enterprise, IT and security teams are facing a dynamic threat landscape and very skilled and patient adversaries. Our ninth annual report showcases that very clearly,” said Matthew Moynahan, president of Arbor Networks. “There is no single, magic bullet solution and it is a mistake to think technology alone can secure a network. Multi-layered defenses are clearly needed, but so is a commitment to best practices for people and process.”
