As reported by the company’s “Penki kontinentai” representatives, the company recorded a strongly enhanced attack of DDos (Distributed Denial of Service) on the 12th of July, this year, directed against the company’s customers. During such attacks, a large amount of requests is sent to a server. Hackers hope that the server will thus be unable to deal with such a data flow, normal requests will not be accepted and thereby smooth day-to-day operation will be disrupted.

According to the Head of Network Operations Department of the Company Tomas Okmanas, such increase in DDos attacks has been recorded for the first time and the observed trends suggest that the attacks continue to intensify.

“Our Skynet network is constantly under attack by cyber criminals from different countries of the world. Over the past three months, we have been experiencing more of their malicious actions. The last recorded attack was fairly recent, i.e. on July 12th. It is almost impossible to give a 100 percent guarantee of protection to the customers; therefore, there is a pressing need for greater state attention to this issue. In the short run, we are planning to contact the Communications Regulatory Authority of the Republic of Lithuania or the National Electronic Communications Networks and Information Security Emergency Response Unit; however, we are not sure whether they are currently able to help us”, says T. Okmanas.

While large-scale DDoS attacks are rather simple to arrange and they are performed from infected computers anywhere in the world, protection against such actions is extremely expensive.

“Protection against DDoS attacks is an extremely time-consuming task that requires a lot of investment. We have partly managed to protect our customers, because we constantly invest in this area. We have a lot of certified specialists who know what to do in case of a similar problem and we use highly sophisticated equipment by “Cisco Systems”. While in this fight our specialists are like soldiers and their certificates are like their shoulder-straps, it is too much of a financial burden for a single company to ensure a one hundred percent success; therefore, state assistance is required”, adds T. Okmanas.

The fact that the situation of cyber security in Lithuania is not satisfactory is recognized by most IT specialists. This has been proven by the attack of cyber criminals against one of the major news portals arranged this spring. This event forced the government officials to pay attention to the issue: in June, the Cyber Security Advisory Council was set up and the Ministry of the Interior was assigned the task to prepare a Draft Law on Cyber Security by October 1st. Only time will tell whether these actions will ensure the company’s protection from cyber criminals.