For nearly a decade, DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) was a basic flood attack that simply tried to overwhelm a connection with traffic with the goal of taking that web property offline. DDoS was a basic attack against availability.

The barrier to entry has been obliterated by new tools that enable anyone with an Internet connection and a grievance to launch an attack. This is a true game changer in terms of the threat landscape and what businesses should consider themselves a potential target of attack. It used to be certain verticals would be likely targets for DDoS, finance, gaming and e-commerce at the top of the list. Today, any business, for any reason, any real or perceived offense or affiliation, can become a target.

Beyond the democratization of DDoS are the advancements in attack techniques and targets. DDoS today is in fact a series of attacks that target not just connection bandwidth, but multiple devices that make up your existing security infrastructure, such as Firewall/IPS devices, as well wide variety of applications that the business relies on, like HTTP, HTTPS, VoIP, DNS and SMTP.

The hottest trend in DDoS today is the multi-vector attack, combining flood, application and state exhaustion attacks against infrastructure devices all in a single, sustained attack. These attacks are popular because they difficult to defend against and often highly effective.

The new realities of DDoS today require a new approach to DDoS defenses.