UK Lottery website hack - industry expert comment from Arbor Networks
October 2017 by Arbor Networks
Following the news that UK Lottery website has been knocked offline by DDoS attacks, The comment from Kirill Kasavchenko, Principal Security Technologist at Arbor Networks on the topic below.
“This latest DDoS attack shows that cyber criminals are still up to old tricks, this time deliberately targeting the National Lottery website at a time of peak demand. We can also see that response plans are often not up to scratch, with the incident lasting 90 minutes. Websites who are unable to contain a DDoS attack like this risk losing their audience to competitors if they are unable to minimise the disruption, so it is essential that organisations expect cyber-attacks and know how they will respond.
“All organisations must examine their current DDoS defences, and decide whether their current processes are robust enough to ensure operations will not be halted by a DDoS attack. To guard against such attacks, organisations should implement best current practices for DDoS defence. That includes hardening network infrastructures, ensuring complete visibility of all network traffic, and implementing sufficient DDoS mitigation capacity and capabilities. Those mitigation defences ideally should be a combination of on-premises and cloud-based DDoS mitigation services. It is also crucial that organisations ensure their DDoS defence plan is kept updated and is rehearsed on a regular basis.”
“Cyber-criminals are an ever present threat, so organisations must act now to protect their operations from damaging interferences.”