Report on the impact of data centre cyber attacks

17th May 2016

Emerson

Jordan Mulcare

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Emerson Network Power in conjunction with the Ponemon Institute, has released an analysis of the impact and cost of Denial of Service (DoS) attacks on the data centre. Denial of Service attacks occur when a criminal prevents legitimate users from accessing information or services, with resultant disruptions that can result in total or partial outages. The report documents the increase in DoS attacks over a five-year period and analyses the impact 273 DoS attacks had on data centre availability.

Major findings include:

The frequency of DoS attacks increased 59% between 2010 and 2015
The average cost of a DoS attack increased 31% between 2010 and 2015
Forty-nine percent of the 273 DoS attacks analysed resulted in a partial or full shutdown of the data center.
DoS attacks that cause a total outage result in an average cost of $610,300. DoS attacks that did not result in an outage have an average cost of $36,800
Organisations that withstood DoS attacks without a data center outage are more likely to have characteristics such as a command and control governance structure, high data center redundancy, network intelligence tools, advance threat intelligence, and enterprise deployment of anti-DoS tools.

While DoS attacks are the most frequently used cyberattacks—and the most costly form of cybercrime in terms of data centre disruption—they represent only one of the threats data center managers face today. The report also documents the cost of other forms of cybercrime, including malicious insiders, malicious code, phishing and stolen devices.

“The findings of this study should help raise awareness among data center and facility managers of the growing threat to data center availability represented by cybercrime,” said Steve Hassell, president of data centre solutions for Emerson Network Power. “This is essential because data center professionals will increasingly be expected to work with the security professionals within their organization to develop and implement plans that close security gaps and increase data centre resiliency.”