Any intent to prevent users from accessing systems, networks, or data by either flooding a
server with traffic and or encrypting critical data, is considered an attack on availability. For
example the evident rise in DDoS attacks seen in 2025 where there have been a total of 27.8
million attacks reported, some exceeding 1 terabit per second in traffic volume. These attacks
overwhelm bandwidth or can stress server resources or application layers making services
unreachable. Another type of attack on availability is botnet flooding, this is where someone
uses a network of devices to overwhelm a system, server, or network that are normally busy
with requests. This attack can come from thousands or even millions of infected devices and is
very difficult for the targeted system or network to distinguish real users from fake requests. It
consumes all of the available bandwidth or resources within the server until it slows the system
down and ultimately crashes or becomes completely inaccessible. For larger corporations,
availability attacks can cause operational failures and faults, detrimental revenue loss and
reputational damage of their business following with potential loss of customer trust. For users
you face not being able to use most services like health records, or personal files, and risk
losing access to critical information. Attacks on availability are not only the most common form
of cybercrime but the most impactful as well, attacking larger businesses and individuals who
are targeted for their information, fighting against this requires both tough and up to date
infrastructure and proactive response planning