Most of the time, the Internet flows like water or electricity. But disruptions do happen, and last week brought a big one when an as-yet unidentified group attempted to take down the servers of European anti-spam group Spamhaus by slamming them with as much as 300 gbps of bogus traffic.
According to multiple reports, the digital onslaught -- known in tech parlance as a distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attack -- is the largest on record, and affected performance across the continent. Akamai Technologies (AKAM +3.80%), whose Kona security service is built to deflect Internet threats, was among the first to report the dramatic rise in Web traffic in Europe.
Other reports said that worldwide sabotage of some undersea cables may be playing a bigger role in the European slowdown. Either way, the Internet is more vulnerable than any of us would like to admit, and we need to be investing accordingly, says Tim Beyers, of Motley Fool Rule Breakers and Motley Fool Supernova, in the following video.
Do you believe cloud computing providers have done enough to account for the known frailties of the Internet? Let us know where you stand in the comments box below.
