DNS Attacks Costing Businesses More Than $1 Million, Says First Ever DNS Security Report

WEST CHESTER, Pennsylvania, June 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

• Yet almost 30% of organizations still do not rate DNS as an important part of their business
• EfficientIP announces findings of first specific report on DNS security

EfficientIP, a leading developer and provider of DDI solutions (DNS, DHCP, and IP address management services), has conducted the first survey of its kind on DNS security, proving 25% of businesses are not implementing any kind of security software- costing them more than $1 million in damages.

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The report looks at the technical and behavioural causes for the rise of DNS vulnerabilities and the potential business effects. Nearly 1,000 senior security professionals participated, from a range of small, medium and large-vertical enterprises in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.

The study discovered that 74% of CSOs and Network Directors have been victims of DNS attacks. However, despite 79% being aware of the risks associated with DNS, only 59% were using any form of DNS security.

David Williamson, CEO of EfficientIP, said, "The report has highlighted that despite the massive increase in cyber attacks, companies and their IT departments still don't fully appreciate the risks from DNS-based attacks. In just under two years, GDPR will come into effect and companies will be held responsible for all security breaches and could face major fines. It's crucial for all businesses to start taking DNS security seriously."

The report also revealed:

• The most common attack types - of which businesses claim to be aware - are also the main causes of business outages and data theft
  
• The top three DNS attacks that have the largest impact on an organization including:
  
  • DDoS attacks: 22% of the organizations surveyed had been subject to DNS-based DDoS attacks in the last year
    
  • Data exfiltration: 12% of organizations in North America and 39% in Asia have had data infiltrated via DNS in the last year
    
  • Zero-day vulnerabilities: Almost 20% of the organizations surveyed had suffered an attack using DNS zero-day vulnerabilities in the last year
     
• Only 23% of those surveyed recognized zero-day attacks or DNS tunnelling as risks, only 29% were aware of cache poisoning, and only 30% were aware of DDoS attacks
  
• While firewalls can protect on a basic level, they are not designed to deal with high bandwidth DDoS attacks, or detect DNS tunnelling attempts (the majority of DDoS attacks are now over 1Gbps)
  
• Most businesses still rely on 'out-of-the-box' non-secure DNS servers offered by Microsoft or Linux servers

EfficientIP will be releasing an annual DNS security survey. To view the full report, please visit http://www.efficientip.com/resources/white-paper-dns-security-survey-2016, and learn more at http://www.efficientip.com.

SOURCE EfficientIP