While new cybersecurity threats emerge all the time, some long-standing basic threats have never gone away. The humble brute-force security attack, the distributed denial of service (DDoS), came back with a vengeance during the COVID crisis. Amazon experienced the largest DDoS attack of all time in February 2020, and there were large attacks on gaming and media sites and servers, as well as an onslaught of ransom-driven DDoS attacks. 

Headlines in both mainstream and tech media are ablaze with cautionary tales and exclamation points: government and public sector websites are big security targets now -- and in the future. Germany’s defense minister, for example, has sounded the alarm: cybersecurity has to be a priority because attacks targeting governments will grow in frequency and severity and may even threaten global stability on several fronts: geopolitical, environment, technological and economic. 

During periods of fear and uncertainty, such as the COVID-19-dominated period we’re living in now, the risk for cyberattacks, such as DDoS attacks and costly data breaches increases exponentially. For some perspective, recent data shows (before coronavirus lockdowns and its unforeseen security risks hit):

The COVID-19 virus has attacked more than just health and people’s freedom of movement. It has also succeeded at undermining online security as more organizations and people rely on their online presence exclusively and turn to internet-based work, study, purchases and communications. The traffic spikes characteristic of the early part of the crisis have started to stabilize, meaning that uptime should also be stable for regular traffic, regardless of volume if you’re monitoring your availability and making provisions for redundancy. But irregular traffic booms, which are often the harbinger of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack is entirely another creature.