The Hidden Economics of DDoS and Bot Attacks: How to Tip the Balance

When people think of cybercrime, they often picture stolen records or ransomware. But the fastest-growing threat today isn’t about theft. It’s about disruption. Today, anyone can rent a botnet for less than the price of a coffee and launch a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that cripples an entire organisation in minutes. According to new data featured in RedShield’s Contemporary DDoS and Bot Protection whitepaper, DDoS-for-hire services typically cost just US$5 to $7 per hour. Meanwhile, the average business stands to lose around US$234,000 in downtime, recovery costs, and lost revenue.

The financial toll is only part of the problem. Around 75% of consumers say they’ll abandon a brand after a serious cyber incident, so reputational damage can linger long after your site comes back online. Smaller organisations are hit hardest. Many rely on their websites as their main storefronts, and even a short disruption can wipe out months of sales opportunities. For these businesses, time is money, and losing either can be hard to recover from.

So why is it so cheap to attack but so expensive to defend? The answer lies in asymmetry. Attackers use globally distributed botnets made up of hacked routers, IoT cameras, and residential proxies. They can overwhelm targets with minimal effort. Defenders, on the other hand, must pay for everything such as bandwidth, surge staffing, threat intel, forensic tools, regardless of how long the attack lasts. Whether the attack lasts five hours or just five seconds.