The EMEA region as a DDoS threat landscape reported over 1,8 million attacks in the first half of 2022, a nine percent increase from the second half of 2021, according to the latest NETSCOUT Threat Intelligence Report. War, religion and politics continue to heat up the situation.
While Russia and Ukraine were the main DDoS attack targets, several countries in the region experienced unusual attack spikes attributed to the aftermath of the war. Finland, for example, reported a 249 percent increase in attacks, most likely due to the country's upcoming NATO membership. Ireland also saw a 200 percent increase in attacks, possibly related to the move of Ukrainian resources out of the country to cloud-based systems in Ireland.
Some climbs up to 250 percent
Richard Hummel, Senior Manager of Threat Intelligence at NETSCOUT, provides the following assessment of how geopolitical conflict is changing the DDoS threat landscape: “In the past, such attacks would have been considered primarily local, but due to the ongoing evolution towards an increasingly globalized and interconnected one socio-economic model, today's attacks lead to worldwide consequences and disproportionate collateral damage. As a result, organizations and individuals who have no inherent interest in a specific socio-political event are still negatively impacted by DDoS attacks.
Another notable trend is that militarily capable nation-states are abandoning strategic ambiguity in favor of open hybrid warfare. And this behavior introduces a dangerous new level of unpredictability into already tense situations.
Local conflicts play a major role
It should also be noted that the attackers do not need a specific reason for an attack. They carry it out under the guise of activism, religion, nihilism, military conquest, etc. Organizations must therefore consider both local and international conflicts when assessing DDoS risk factors, particularly when relating to elements of direct service delivery, supply chain partners and other interdependencies.”
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