DDoS: how defenses are changing against new threats to essential digital services

In the first quarter of 2025, DDoS attacks showed significant growth in both frequency and complexity. According to Cloudflare, the total number of attacks recorded was significantly higher than in the same period in 2024, with a significant increase in attempts against critical online infrastructure. This trend reflects a continuous evolution in the strategies adopted by attackers who, using increasingly sophisticated techniques, aim to disrupt essential digital services for businesses and the public sector. The spread of automated botnets and malicious cloud infrastructures allows volumetric and targeted attacks to be launched with unprecedented ease.

New methodologies and preferred objectives

The DDoS attacks observed in recent months have leveraged a combination of innovative methodologies, including amplification, reflection, and the use of multiple vectors to maximize damage. Campaigns are especially directed at financial services, government agencies, SaaS platforms, and telecom providers, demonstrating a predilection for organizations that offer critical services. There has also been a growing trend toward application-based attacks, which are more sophisticated and difficult to mitigate than purely volumetric attacks. These targeted incursions underscore the ability of threats to quickly adapt to the rapidly evolving technology landscape.

Duration and power of attacks alarm IT professionals

A worrying element highlighted by the report is the increase in both the average duration of attacks and their power. In particular, there have been episodes that have well exceeded 200 million requests per second, numbers that stress network defenses to levels never seen before. Furthermore, the duration of the attacks is progressively extending, with some campaigns persisting for hours or even days, highlighting a clear intention to cause prolonged disruptions. This escalation requires a constant updating of the defensive strategies adopted by cybersecurity teams, forced to refine their countermeasures almost in real time.

Future challenges and mitigation strategies

The growth and complexity of DDoS attacks pose increasingly challenging challenges to IT departments, which must implement distributed mitigation solutions based on artificial intelligence and advanced automation. Companies are now forced to analyze their incoming traffic in detail, promptly isolating malicious flows to ensure the operational continuity of services. Collaboration between security providers, institutions and technology stakeholders becomes crucial to strengthen the overall resilience of the global digital system. For the near future, an increasingly widespread adoption of integrated zero-trust architectures and proactive defense systems is recommended.