Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks present a significant threat to organizations as they grow in sophistication and frequency. According to several studies, the average successful DDoS attack in 2022 lasted for over 50 hours, compared to 30 minutes in 2021. As the entertainment world’s largest source of income, the gaming industry has become a prominent target for DDoS attacks. The gaming industry houses several different entities that need protection in tandem with gadgets such as online access for consoles, smartphones, and cloud-based casual games. This leaves the door open for cybercriminals to capitalize on the ever-expanding attack surface.
Without visibility into DDoS vulnerabilities, an attacker can exploit thousands of entry points without notice. The only way a successful DDoS attack can occur is because of a vulnerability in the DDoS protection. It may only take one attack for an application to experience downtime, costing the businesses hundreds of thousands to millions in revenue along with their reputation within the gaming space. When an attack does occur, organizations are forced to operate in a reactive scenario that will only disrupt business and risk further downtime. As the DDoS attack surface continues to expand, gaming companies must gain insight into their vulnerabilities to close these gaps in protection and ensure players remain online.
The Evolution of DDoS Within the Gaming Industry
There are several enticing factors behind launching a DDoS attack in the gaming industry: competition, extortion, and even disgruntled gamers. Threat actors know exactly how much in revenue and reputational costs a minute of downtime will have on the organization. Competition is a also critical factor because if one site goes down, users can easily pass to the next online platform to continue their gaming experience.
Likewise, extortion has become an easy way for attackers to monetize the industry by threatening to attack an online gaming company unless a payment is made, specifically after a demonstration that the threat is real. Online gaming platforms especially house big players in this field with great sums of money at stake, placing a large target on these organizations for cybercriminals to exploit.
There is also a growing trend among disgruntled gamers – ‘DDoS for hire’. Individuals no longer need to be knowledgeable about the functions of DDoS attacks. They can have someone else launch the attack on their behalf. Gaming organizations are heavily investing in DDoS protection. The problem is that they are not consistently scrutinizing every vulnerability across the attack surface. The only reason gaming companies are experiencing downtime is because of a vulnerability in the protection they have already implemented.
Deploying a tier-one DDoS protection provider can only ensure around 60% automated protection into the attack surface. The other 40% must be continuously scrutinized with visibility tools. While many of these gaming organizations have the best protection in place, they don’t have the list of vulnerabilities within that solution. Without this critical insight, it’s impossible to manage the vulnerabilities and protect against this growing threat.
A Race Against Time
It’s no longer an if, but when a gaming organization will suffer from a DDoS attack. This is not a new concept in the industry. It is well-known that these attacks are being launched at an alarming rate. To transform DDoS protection processes, gaming companies should start with a trusted solution that continuously identifies vulnerabilities across the attack surface, while speeding up the remediation process to ensure the damaging downtime is minimized.
Once these vulnerabilities are identified, organizations must confirm their closure to provide a more solid defense. At this stage of the process, the company is battling the clock to prevent further damage. Organizations that cannot keep up with this process will continue to experience downtime. DDoS mitigation vendors that are not actively engaged in vulnerability management will be at a major disadvantage when working to avoid damaging DDoS attacks.
If you are not at the top of your game with DDoS protection, your organization will be knocked offline, costing millions in downtime and reputational losses.
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