Mumbai: Global market for cyber security solutions may grow to $870 million by 2017, says research firm IDC.

Cybercriminals use thousands of networked computers (botnets) to 'jam' a website by directing excessive traffic to it, causing it to crash. Such attacks are often termed as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS). According to IDC, there was a sharp increase in frequency, volume and orientation of such attacks on websites of leading financial firms and other organizations last year.

"As attacks surged in prevalence and sophistication, organizations were often caught unaware. Embedded capabilities were quickly overwhelmed and outages were readily apparent on the web," IDC vice president (security products and services research) Christian Christiansen said in a statement.

This is driving the demand for proactive solutions. "The worldwide market for DDoS prevention solutions will grow by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.2 per cent from 2012 through 2017 and reach USD 870 million," it added.

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