The breadth of cyber threats that an organization must engage with and combat seemingly change on a daily basis. Each new technology, vulnerability or exploit vector results in a new threat that must be protected against. Meanwhile some forms of attack never appear to age—they remain a threat to business continuity despite years of advances in defensive strategy. One particularly insidious and never-ending threat is that of the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.

Never far from the news headlines, DDoS attacks are the staple disruptive technique preferred by an increasingly broad spectrum of attackers. While they may be the oldest and most commonly encountered form of cyber attack, defenses against them are often non-trivial and even the best tried-and-tested protection can fail under a sufficiently well conceived attack.

In order to best understand the threat modern DDoS campaigns pose to enterprise networks and the businesses that depend upon them, I’ve pulled together a new whitepaper on the topic.

The paper “Understanding the Modern DDoS Threat” examines the technology, coordination tactics and motivations behind the DDoS attacks likely to pose a risk to Internet accessible businesses now and in the immediate future. It steps through the thought processes governing the primary instigators of the attacks and their tactics of choice.

Armed with this level of understanding, the folks charged with defending their organizations from the DDoS menace will be better able to mitigate the threat and effectively communicate its impact to the higher echelons of their organization.