Analytics

StormWalls data suggests that DDoS actors are beginning to shift their attention from banking and traditional fintech services to crypto, in 2021.

As the world relies on digital technologies more and more, the consequences of DDoS attacks can ripple further than before. In this article, we’re taking a look at some of the biggest cyber threats right now and the forecast on how they will evolve in 2021.

Which industries are targeted by hackers and how to defend against a potential attack if you work in these business areas? Ramil Khantimirov, CEO and founder of StormWall, talks about the most vulnerable industries.

The number of hacker attacks on online stores and retailers around the world in Q4 2020 increased by 77% compared to the same period a year ago.

More than a year has passed since the first wave of COVID. As experts predicted, the increased dependence of users on Internet technologies has led to a surge of all sorts of cybercriminals. The main threats of 2021 are associated with several main areas.

As our analysis showed, the intensity of DDoS attacks, in general, continues to grow. So, in Q1 2021, we recorded 25.4% more attacks on our customers than in the fourth quarter of 2020. The leaders in the number of attacks were e-commerce, construction, entertainment, telecommunications, as well as the financial sector.

According to StormWall IT security experts, DDoS attacks against telecom companies are on the rise. The surge of such attacks was first detected in early 2021, during the New Year holidays. This January, the incidence of DDoS attacks on the telecom sector has increased by 10% compared with January 2020 and by 34% compared with December 2020, as indicated by data shared by StormWall clients. Hackers mainly targeted small Internet service providers, hosting providers and small data centers with insufficient resources to protect the infrastructure from large-scale DDoS attacks.

StormWall experts analyzed DDoS attacks targeting multiple European online markets in 2020. The analysis revealed that the Entertainment sector (39,6%), Telecommunications (28%), and Online retail (14,55%) were attacked the most. Other industries that were commonly targeted by DDoS campaigns during the year were Finance (8,94%), Education (5,5%) and Construction (3,41%). The data used for the analysis was obtained from StormWall’s customers across multiple industries.

Experts from StormWall studied DDoS-attacks targeting the online retail industry in Europe. During the research, StormWall collected data from its clients working in multiple e-commerce segments. Experts discovered that during the pandemic, between February and October 2020, the number of DDoS attacks targeted at online retail services quadrupled compared to the same period last year.