The Evolution Of Enterprise Killers

By Neal Quinn, Chief Operating Officer, Prolexic

Threats to e-commerce have been around as long as e-commerce itself. Since the first highly publicized Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack took down Yahoo 12 years ago, costing the company US$500,000 in just three hours, security professionals have been in an arms race to keep up with the threat from viruses, worms, trojan horses and other tactics exploited by cybercriminals. Now, as companies rely on e-commerce more than ever, cybercrime has taken a leap forward that threatens unprecedented levels of damage for businesses large and small.

The 2000 Yahoo attack was launched by a 15-year-old Canadian named Michael Calce and showed to the world just how vulnerable even the largest companies were to cyber assault. But today’s cybercriminals are not lone teenage hackers. Today’s attacks are concerted, coordinated efforts from activists, organized crime or even your competitors. And they are more dangerous than ever.