Nearly 581,000 distributed denial-of-service attacks were discovered and averted by Radware last year, with DDoS attacks per customer increasing by 37% between 2020 and 2021, according to TechRepublic. Attacks peaked in July before declining to levels similar to the end of 2020 by year-end, according to the report. Companies in the retail and gaming industries experienced most of the DDoS attacks last year, followed by those in the government, health care, technology, and finance segments. Meanwhile, 40% of the attacks were targeted at organizations in America and the Europe, Middle East and Africa region. The report also showed a greater focus on targeting cloud providers, which had the potential to impact a larger number of users, as well as an increased severity of DDoS attacks and a growing range of victims during the past year. Threat actors launching DDoS attacks have not only been getting smarter but also changing their attack techniques, according to Radware Director of Threat Intelligence Pascal Geenens. "Ransomware operators and their affiliates, which now include DDoS-for-hire actors, are working with a whole new level of professionalism and discipline - something that we have not seen before," Geenens said.