Zayo: DDoS Attacks Up 106% in Past 12 Months

New data from communications infrastructure provider Zayo confirms a 106% increase in distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks in the last year.

The company released its biannual DDoS Insights report on Thursday. It analyzes how often that malicious hackers used the cyber-attack technique from the second half of 2023 through the first half of 2024. DDoS attacks increased by 106% in that period, Zayo claims. They also lasted about 45 minutes, an 18% increase over the previous 12 months.

Zayo's Max Clauson

“As we predicted last year, DDoS attacks in the age of AI have become more persistent and frequent across all industries, and our latest report confirms this heightened level as the new norm. What’s worse, if this trend continues, we expect attacks could increase another 24% by the end of the year,” said Max Clauson, SVP of network connectivity at Zayo. “The only way to fight back is to add protection to your tech stack. When your business is protected, attackers have no other option but to move on to find an easier target.”

The industry most impacted by DDoS attacks continued to be telecommunications, with 57% of all attacks targeting telecommunications. Education was second with 19%, followed by manufacturing and cloud SaaS at 5% each.

The largest attacks hit manufacturers, replacing retail as No. 1 in industries challenged by the biggest DDoS attacks. Manufacturers experienced a 308% increase in attack durations year over year, while also experiencing a 200% increase in attack size.

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Zayo gathered its data through more than 62,000 threat detections that its DDoS protection customers experienced between Jan. 1 and June 30, 2024.