Introduction

In this assignment I will discuss the characteristics of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks and how they impact an organization’s availability of data. DDoS attacks can disrupt an organization’s availability of data by overflowing their systems. There are widespread financial and reputational consequences to an organization when its data is made unavailable to its consumers.

Characteristics

One major characteristic of DDoS attacks is in the name itself; “distributed” Denial of Service attacks are sent from numerous devices that are implemented in a much larger Botnet. This makes them much harder to track and defend against since some devices could be in South America and others in Russia. DDoS attacks utilize network protocols like HTTP and TCP to flood an organization’s assets such as applications or servers and consumes the organization’s bandwidth, effectively cutting off access to data. Devices like laptops, mobile phones, and IoT devices are all potential vectors for an attacker to execute a DDoS attack.

Consequences

There are consequences to an organization financially and reputationally when a DDoS is executed and data availability is put down. “The IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report notes that the cost of lost business due to a cyberattack averages USD 1.47 million.”  (Jim Holdsworth, 2025). If an organization is unable to provide data availability, not only do they lose money through the loss of transactions, but their reputation is seen as unreliable or untrustworthy since their cybersecurity team could not prevent a potential data breach or data exfiltration.

Conclusion

DDoS attacks disrupt an organization’s data availability through methods like buffer overflows and cause financial and reputational damage. A DDoS attack overloads an organizations system and prevents consumers from accessing data. If data isn’t being accessed, then transactions are not occurring, and money is lost. Even worse if another attack is carried out while the cybersecurity team is dealing with a DDoS attack then they will be seen as untrustworthy and lose customers.

Works Cited

Holdsworth, Jim, Kosinski, Matthew. (2025, May 13). What is a Distributed Denial-of-Service Attack? www.ibm.com. What is a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDos) attack? | IBM