US Signal has released its 2019 State of Web and DDoS Attacks survey, revealing that a staggering 83% of US-based organisations have experienced a DDoS attack within the last two years, with more than half experiencing multiple. But does this make the US less cyber savvy than the rest of us, or are these companies simply a victim of circumstance?

According to those US businesses affected, on average, a DDoS attack caused 12 hours of downtime, and a further 30% said that it caused around 20 hours of downtime.

These periods of downtime have major negative impacts on companies. More than a third of those surveyed considered revenue loss the most dire consequence caused by DDoS attacks.

Other impacts reported by respondents included a decrease in IT staff productivity (34%) and reputational damage (20%). Despite this, 17% of the respondents did not have, or were not sure if they had a DDoS protection provider or tool.

The survey also showed that 81% of respondents had experienced a cyberattack on their web applications in the past two years, and nearly half experienced several cyberattacks.

It went on to discover that the average financial impact of affected companies’ most recent cyberattacks totalled to approximately $152,000.

Despite this, 91% of respondents still consider their website and application security performance to be satisfactory, with nearly three in five saying it’s highly satisfactory.

To combat these threats, many respondents are turning to managed service providers to help implement, monitor and maintain a mixture of cybersecurity technologies, including cloud-based firewalls (73%), DDoS protection (71%) and email security (62%). In addition, 97% of participating organisations scan and test for vulnerabilities within their web applications.

“The number of respondents that have experienced DDoS and application attacks is jarring, demonstrating that there is always room for improvement in keeping up with modern cyberthreats,” said Trevor Bidle, vice president of information security and compliance officer, US Signal.

“While the survey showed that there is a clear culture of investing in IT security solutions across organisations, there seems to be a need for more robust security tools and managed services to help resource-strapped technical teams.”

“The reputational and financial damage that an online attack can cause a company is immense, and we hope security vendors and service providers can use this data to enhance their offerings and further protect their customers’ websites and applications.”