Guidance Consulting, Inc., an IT consulting and vulnerability protection company, warns that denial of service can also carry huge repercussions for a company's bottom line. One of the many IT threats that companies have to be on the watch for in today's technological environment is denial of service attacks. These attacks, which most often target companies who deal with money and other financial transactions, are among the most devastating in terms of lost productivity.
"The financial side of denial of service attacks can be among the biggest IT costs out there," warns Daniel Gottilla, senior consultant at Guidance Consulting. "These kinds of attacks are usually high-profile, which makes them appealing to hackers determined to wreak havoc on a legitimate system."
Denial of service attacks work by making a network or website unavailable to users, either temporarily or permanently. A hacker gets into the network using a variety of methods, but the goal is almost always the same: take down the system so that it can't be functional for the business. For companies on the receiving end of these attacks, the result is lost productivity that can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars in just a few days - especially since the primary targets are those that deal in the financial world.
"For a hacker to be able to point to a major website breakdown and tell his friends 'I did that' is a sort of bragging rights issue," says Gottilla. "While the practice is certainly illegal, it's not always possible for authorities to catch the culprits. That's why the best defense is to put vulnerability protection up before the attacks occur."
Some hackers even use these attacks for personal gain. A few years ago, it was a fairly common practice for denial of service attacks to become a sort of blackmail scenario. Hackers would get into a system and threaten to shut everything down without a payment of anywhere between $50,000 and $100,000. Companies that refused to pay were then attacked and their infrastructure shut down.
"Although these scenarios aren't as common anymore, the threat is still there," Gottilla warns. "And the cost of protection is much, much less than the cost of trying to rebuild or restore a network."
About Guidance Consulting
Guidance Consulting is a technology solutions firm offering a range of services related to technology, infrastructure development, and general information technology consulting.
For over 15 years, Guidance Consulting has been delivering profitable technology results to everything from small, private firms to Fortune 500 companies. In addition to meeting employment and staffing needs, Guidance Consulting implements a wide range of IT solutions that help companies to cut costs, increase productivity, and avoid damages associated with vulnerability issues to get the most out of the current technologies available for businesses of all sizes.
For more information on making Guidance Consulting a part of your company's IT support team, visit their website at http://www.guidance-consulting.com.
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