The effect of downtime

I know that in the lecture last week the topic of distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) came up and the temporary shutdown of Twitter online. What I wanted to discuss was the effect that a DDoS attack has on members in the commercial arena using Web 2.0 applications. Many companies these days are using the internet to conduct marketing and sales. With such a large growth of the use of Web 2.0 applications it is not strange to see large companies jumping onto this platfrom to push their products and services. Unfortunately, as online entities grow bigger so does the potential for them to become a target. Computer hackers who use the DDoS attacks have the ability to bring a site down by flooding the server with multiple requests. According to an article in Toptechnews Dell Computers had recorded making sales in excess of $3million as a result of having a twitter account. This displays the effectiveness and value that Web 2.0 applications can have. The loss of ability to commuincate to its customers is definitely something that would cost the company money. I wonder if Dell could attribute an amount of money they potentially lost while Twitter was offline?

Recently on 4 Corners there was a program entitled “Fear in the Fast Lane” which discussed the effect of the rollout of the new high speed broadband network by the government and the effect that it would have in the cyber community. It also discussed the issues of Botnets and DDoS attacks being commited on organisations here in Australia. It claimed that with the increased network capabilities that the new broadband network will have means that Australian networks will now become a desired platform for hosting DDoS attacks in the future. There is a streamed video of the program that can be seen from the four corners website that is well worth watching. It is a scary world out there.