Qualys Blog

Destruction of service. Get acquainted with this newly-minted term, and with its acronym — DeOS. It’s a particularly disturbing type of cyber attack InfoSec teams may face regularly in the not too distant future.

That’s one of the main findings featured in the Cisco 2017 Midyear Cybersecurity Report, a comprehensive cyber security study the networking giant has been publishing for almost a decade.

Due to several troubling developments, including the expected popularization of DeOS attacks — intended to wreck breached IT systems — and the proliferation of IoT device use in DDoS attacks, this report blares a special alarm.

“We must raise our warning flag even higher,” reads the report, which is based on research and data from Cisco and several of its technology partners, including Qualys. “Our security experts are becoming increasingly concerned about the accelerating pace of change — and yes, sophistication — in the global cyber threat landscape.”
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In recent years cybercrime has gone from an array of independent hackers to a global industrialized operation that utilizes collaboration, worldwide coordination and advanced criminal techniques to evade detection. One would expect this increased organization and sophistication would improve the speed at which “hackers hack.” And you would be correct: according to a recently released report, the time between an exploit announcement and the first attack is typically just 7.5 days, down from just under 10 days in 2008.

Your organization is likely already struggling with meeting internal and regulatory requirements for patch times. In addition, vulnerabilities and their risk to the organization are increasing each day, as hackers are now able to weaponize new vulnerabilities faster than ever.

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