Friday, February 11, 2000

Report: Web Hacks To Cost $1.2 Billion

Losses related to this week's distributed denial-of-service attacks that temporarily shut down several of the most popular Web sites could total more than $1.2 billion, according to a report from the Yankee Group. In the report, the Yankee Group asserts that the attacks resulted in capitalization losses that exceeded $1 billion on the days of the attacks and that revenue loss in both sales and advertising dollars is expected to exceed $100 million.

The attacks, which hit Yahoo, CNN.com, eBay, Buy.com, E-Trade, Amazon.com, and others, caused service disruptions that ranged from two hours and 45 minutes to five hours in duration. The report maintains that the affected companies and their Internet peers will spend an additional $100 million to $200 million on security infrastructure upgrades. The resulting damage to brand image, partnership, and future customers will result in further impact on all the companies, the report states.

The report calls for Web sites to make use of security-assessment technologies to identify and patch the holes and vulnerabilities in their systems to prevent such denial-of-service attacks. The Yankee Group predicts that Internet security breaches will get even worse, as attacks could be launched from any of the millions of homes with always-on cable and digital subscriber line connections.

-- Matthew G. Nelson

http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20000211S0003

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), February 13, 2000